SC-900 Practice Question: Describe the concepts of security, compliance, and identity
Which Microsoft cloud service provides a unified data governance solution that helps you manage and protect data across your entire data estate, including multi-cloud and on-premises?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Microsoft Purview with Microsoft Defender for Cloud or Microsoft Sentinel, because all three involve 'protection' or 'security,' but Purview is specifically a data governance and compliance solution, not a security monitoring or posture management tool.
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
✓
Microsoft Purview
Microsoft Purview is the correct answer because it is a unified data governance service that provides visibility into data assets across on-premises, multi-cloud, and SaaS environments. It enables data classification, sensitive data discovery, and policy-based access control to manage and protect the entire data estate, aligning with the question's requirement for a comprehensive governance solution.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Why it's wrong here
Defender for Cloud is a cloud security posture and workload protection service spanning Azure, AWS and GCP; it does not catalogue, classify or govern data assets. It is correct when hardening infrastructure configurations and detecting threats to cloud workloads.
- ✗
Microsoft Intune
Why it's wrong here
Intune manages device enrolment, configuration and compliance, not data governance across a data estate. It is tempting because it does govern something centrally, but its scope is endpoint management, so it cannot catalogue or classify data in multi-cloud and on-premises sources.
- ✗
Microsoft Sentinel
Why it's wrong here
Sentinel is a SIEM/SOAR platform for threat detection and incident response, not data governance. It appeals because it ingests data from many sources, yet that ingestion serves security analytics; it neither catalogues nor applies governance policies to your data estate.
- ✓
Microsoft Purview
Why this is correct
Microsoft Purview is the unified data governance service spanning multi-cloud and on-premises sources, satisfying the stem's cross-estate constraint. Its Data Map catalogues and classifies assets, while sensitivity labels and policies enforce protection, capabilities that Microsoft Entra ID and Defender for Cloud do not provide.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
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
Policy
A policy is a set of rules or guidelines that defines how an organization manages, secures, and operates its IT systems and services.
About these practice questions
One of 1,279 original SC-900 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.