SC-900 Practice Question: Describe the capabilities of Microsoft compliance solutions
A company is involved in litigation and needs to search for specific emails and documents across Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Teams. They also need to place a hold on relevant content to prevent deletion. Which Microsoft Purview solution should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Data Lifecycle Management (retention) with eDiscovery holds, not realizing that retention policies are for scheduled deletion/preservation, while eDiscovery holds are for legal preservation that overrides any deletion policies and includes search capabilities.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
eDiscovery
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (specifically eDiscovery (Premium)) is the correct solution because it is designed for legal investigations, enabling organizations to search for content across Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Teams, and to place holds on that content to preserve it from deletion or alteration. This directly addresses the litigation requirement for both search and hold capabilities.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Records Management
Why it's wrong here
Records Management within Microsoft Purview focuses on declaring specific items as records, applying immutable retention labels, and managing their disposition according to regulatory and organizational policies. Its primary function is to ensure long-term compliance and prevent unauthorized alteration or deletion of critical information. However, it does not provide the active search capabilities or the ability to place targeted legal holds required for litigation discovery.
- ✗
Data Lifecycle Management
Why it's wrong here
Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) automates the retention and deletion of data across an organization's various data sources based on predefined policies, aiming to optimize storage costs and meet general compliance requirements. It ensures that data is kept for the necessary period and then appropriately disposed of. While DLM manages the overall data lifespan, it lacks the specialized tools for targeted content searching, collection, and the specific, overriding legal holds essential for eDiscovery processes.
- ✓
eDiscovery
Why this is correct
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery solutions are specifically designed to enable organizations to identify, preserve, collect, process, review, and produce electronically stored information (ESI) in response to legal or regulatory requests. It provides advanced search capabilities across diverse data sources, allows for placing immutable legal holds to prevent data alteration, and facilitates the secure export of relevant data for legal proceedings. This functionality directly addresses the need to search for specific emails and manage them for litigation purposes.
- ✗
Data Loss Prevention
Why it's wrong here
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies are implemented to identify, monitor, and protect sensitive information from being inadvertently or maliciously shared outside the organization or across unauthorized internal boundaries. These policies enforce rules to prevent data exfiltration or inappropriate use by detecting specific content types or labels. However, DLP's purpose is preventative data protection, not the active content searching, collection, or the application of legal holds that are fundamental to litigation support.
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Microsoft Entra ID
Key term
Microsoft Purview
Microsoft Purview is a unified data governance and compliance service that helps organizations discover, manage, and protect their data across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.
Key term
Exchange Online
Exchange Online is Microsoft's cloud-based email, calendar, and contact hosting service that is part of the Microsoft 365 suite, allowing organizations to manage corporate messaging without maintaining their own mail servers.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SC-900 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SC-900 exam.