A Deep Dive into Sensitivity and Retention

In today's digital age, organizations must prioritize data protection and governance more than ever. With the increasing number of cyber threats and stringent data protection regulations, businesses must ensure that their data is secure, compliant, and retained as needed. Microsoft 365 offers a comprehensive suite of tools to help businesses achieve these goals, and the Microsoft Compliance Center is at the heart of this effort. Let’s delve into the essential features of the Microsoft Compliance Center, with a focus on sensitivity and retention.

Understanding the Microsoft Compliance Center

The Microsoft Compliance Center is a centralized platform that provides organizations with the tools and insights they need to manage their data compliance requirements. It offers a wide range of features and services, including data protection, information governance, and security. By leveraging the Microsoft Compliance Center, organizations can streamline their compliance efforts and ensure that their data is protected and managed in accordance with regulatory requirements.

Sensitivity Labels: A Key Component of Information Protection

Sensitivity labels are a crucial aspect of data protection in the Microsoft Compliance Center. They enable organizations to classify their data based on its level of sensitivity, ensuring that the appropriate security measures are applied. Sensitivity labels can be applied to individual files, emails, or folders, and are designed to help organizations maintain a consistent level of security across their entire data environment.

There are several types of sensitivity labels that can be used to classify data. The “default” labels include: 

1. Confidential: Data that is intended for internal use only and should not be shared outside the organization. 

2. Internal: Data that can be shared within the organization but should not be disclosed to external parties. 

3. Public: Data that can be freely shared with external parties and is not considered sensitive. 

4. Highly Confidential: Data that is extremely sensitive and requires the highest level of security and protection. 

Retention Policies: Preserving Data for Legal and Regulatory Compliance 

Retention policies are another critical component of the Microsoft Compliance Center. Retention labels are designed to help organizations meet their data retention requirements and enable organizations to define the length of time that data should be retained, as well as the actions that should be taken when data reaches its retention period. This can include actions such as moving data to a different location or deleting it altogether. 

Retention policies can be applied to a wide range of data types, including emails, documents, and conversations. By implementing retention policies, organizations can ensure that their data is retained for the appropriate amount of time, helping them to meet legal and regulatory compliance requirements. 

Credit: Gerd Altmann, https://pixabay.com/users/geralt-9301/, via Pixabay

Automating Compliance with the Microsoft Compliance Center 

The Microsoft Compliance Center offers powerful automation capabilities that can help organizations streamline their compliance efforts. Automation can be used to apply sensitivity labels and retention policies to data automatically, ensuring that the appropriate security measures and retention periods are applied consistently. 

For example, organizations can use automation to: 

1. Apply sensitivity labels to data based on specific keywords, file types, or other criteria. 
2. Automatically apply retention policies to data based on its sensitivity level. 
3. Monitor and enforce compliance with data protection policies, ensuring that sensitive data is not shared or accessed inappropriately.

How can Pait Help?

The Microsoft Compliance Center is a powerful tool for organizations looking to manage their data compliance requirements. By leveraging the capabilities of sensitivity labels and retention policies, businesses can ensure that their data is protected and retained in accordance with regulatory requirements. PAIT Group can help by working with users within your organization to tailor Sensitivity and Retention policies that are specific to your business, industry, department, or team. PAIT Group can work with you to identify and create labels based on specific needs. We can create custom labels and label policies to better tailor the labels to your business needs and help with adoption and roll out as well. PAIT Group can assist your organization in creating and deploying retention policies based on industry or company specific compliance and help ease users into the labeling process. In addition, we provide ongoing support to review the compliance settings and ensure that the policies are working as intended. Reach out today to start your own compliance journey. You’ll be thankful you did!