SC-900 Practice Question: Describe the concepts of security, compliance, and identity
Your organization is implementing Microsoft Purview to manage data compliance. They need to automatically detect and protect credit card numbers in emails and documents. Which Microsoft Purview feature should they configure?
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
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Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies in Microsoft Purview can automatically detect sensitive information like credit card numbers and apply protective actions, such as blocking or encrypting the content. Information Protection refers to sensitivity labels and encryption, but DLP is the feature that uses policies to detect and protect data in transit and at rest. Data Lifecycle Management handles retention and deletion. Insider Risk Management focuses on user behavior.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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Data Lifecycle Management
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) focuses on governing the retention and deletion of data across an organization's digital estate. It enables the creation of retention labels and policies to ensure data is kept for compliance reasons or disposed of when no longer needed, managing the data's entire lifecycle. However, DLM does not actively scan content for specific sensitive information types, such as credit card numbers, to prevent their initial disclosure or unauthorized sharing.
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Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
Why this is correct
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies are specifically designed to identify, monitor, and protect sensitive information across various locations, including Microsoft 365 services, endpoints, and non-Microsoft cloud apps. These policies leverage sensitive information types (SITs) to automatically detect patterns like credit card numbers, social security numbers, or health records. Upon detection, DLP enforces protective actions such as blocking sharing, notifying users, or encrypting content to prevent data exfiltration and ensure compliance.
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Insider Risk Management
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management (IRM) is designed to detect, investigate, and act on malicious or inadvertent activities by users that could lead to data leakage or security incidents. It uses machine learning to identify anomalous user behaviors, such as unusual data downloads or access patterns, indicating potential risk. IRM focuses on user-centric risk patterns and behavioral analytics rather than directly scanning content for specific sensitive information types like credit card numbers to prevent their initial sharing.
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Information Protection
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) provides the framework for classifying and protecting sensitive data using sensitivity labels, which can apply visual markings, encryption, and access restrictions to documents and emails. While MIP protects data once it's labeled, it primarily relies on users or automated labeling policies to apply these labels. It does not inherently provide the real-time, policy-based detection of specific sensitive information types like credit card numbers *before* a label is applied or to enforce actions based on content *without* a label; that active enforcement layer for content detection is handled by DLP.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Compliance Concepts
Key term
Compliance
Compliance is the process of ensuring that an organization follows laws, regulations, standards, and internal policies that apply to its operations and data handling.
Key term
Organization
An Organization is a top-level container in Google Cloud that represents your company or entities and serves as the root node for all your cloud resources, policies, and access control.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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