Product and intended use
Define the configuration, people, information and tasks being assessed.
Product, plan and naming
Public claim only
The documentation states that 'If your organization has an Office 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5 subscription (or related E5 add-on subscriptions), you can further manage cases and analyze content by using premium eDiscovery features'. The capability table marks as premium-only: advanced indexing, review sets, import of external data, cloud attachments and SharePoint versions, optical character recognition, conversation threading, decryption, review-set filtering and saved queries, review-set Kusto queries (preview), query reports (preview), tagging, analytics, computed document metadata, guest user access (preview), Security Copilot, process transparency and full reporting, enhanced data source mapping, and Graph API app-only authentication. The Product Terms list 'Microsoft Purview eDiscovery' by name in the Microsoft 365 Compliance Services row of the Core Online Services table, so the Data Protection Addendum applies to it and the Exceptions to the DPA table contains no row removing that.
Ask: Confirm on our order form that our E5 entitlement carries the premium eDiscovery features, and that Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is contracted as a Core Online Service under the current Data Protection Addendum.
AI features in scope
Public claim only
Two distinct AI elements are documented. Security Copilot: 'Use Microsoft Security Copilot features to draft KeyQL search queries by using natural language and to generate contextual summaries of items in a review set', with 'Copilot translates natural language to KeyQL without requiring you to learn how to construct a KeyQL query' and 'Security Copilot summarizes the entire item, including any documents, meetings transcripts, or attachments.' Predictive coding: 'eDiscovery (Premium) provides analytics and machine learning-based predictive coding models', where the customer creates and trains its own models and 'The system uses the training to apply prediction scores to every item in the review set'. Microsoft does not badge everything as AI: near-duplicate detection is documented as a textual similarity threshold with a pivot document per group, and email threading as identification of the messages giving full conversation context. Themes analytics 'attempts to analyze themes in review set documents and assign a theme to documents'.
Ask: Which of Security Copilot query drafting, Security Copilot item summarisation, predictive coding, themes and near-duplicate detection will be enabled for our tenant, and can each be turned off independently?
Deployment and where review-set content sits
Public claim only
Cloud service only, inside the customer's Microsoft 365 tenant. A review set is documented as 'a secure, Microsoft-provided Azure Storage location in the Microsoft cloud' into which collected items are copied from their original location. The documentation adds that the storage is 'Microsoft-owned and Microsoft-managed', that 'Customers don't see, manage, or pay for these storage resources directly', that it is provisioned per case rather than per review set, that 'Each case is isolated from other cases and other tenants at the storage boundary', and that 'There's no customer-accessible SAS token, account key, or storage URL for review set content.' Access is through the Purview portal and approved export workflows only.
Ask: For our tenant, confirm the Azure region of the case storage for each case geo we will use, and how that region is evidenced to us.
Jurisdiction and legal content
Public claim only
The product holds no legal-content library and makes no representation about Australian law: its corpus is the customer's own Microsoft 365 content in Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Groups, OneDrive, SharePoint and Viva Engage, plus external data the customer imports into a review set. Search-and-delete extends to email, Teams chat messages and 'Copilot and AI application data'. Nothing read on 2026-09-27 claims coverage of Australian legislation, rules of court or case law, and no discovery-rule or court-format template for any Australian jurisdiction is documented.
Ask: Does Microsoft publish any load-file or export format mapped to the discovery practice notes of the Federal Court of Australia or any State Supreme Court, or is format conformance entirely on us?
Vendor content directing how AI describes the product
Not confirmed
A deliberate check was made on 2026-09-27 over the Microsoft Learn documentation pages and the Product Terms and Data Protection Addendum pages read for this profile, and no page or block directing how AI models, assistants or crawlers should describe the product was found. The check is partial and should not be read as a clean result for the domain: no site map of microsoft.com or learn.microsoft.com was run, and no /llms.txt or /ai-info URL was tested, because guessing URLs was outside the credit budget.
Ask: Does Microsoft publish any page or embedded block directing how AI assistants should describe Purview eDiscovery or Security Copilot, and where is it?
Data, controls and requirements
Compare the actual configuration with firm, client and jurisdiction requirements, supported by evidence.
Client authority and the scope of what is collected
Not confirmed
The product searches, holds and copies the whole of a nominated person's mailbox, OneDrive, SharePoint sites and Teams chat, including private messages, and Security Copilot's access is scoped to what the individual user can already see: 'Security Copilot runs queries as the user, so it never has elevated privileges beyond what the user has.' Two design points a firm must accept rather than configure: content protected by Microsoft Purview Message Encryption, sensitivity labels or Azure Rights Management is decrypted automatically when added to search results or a review set, so protective marking does not keep a document out of a review set; and guest user access lets an external reviewer with the Reviewer role into a review set, which is a preview feature. Nothing documented records a client's authority for the collection: that is entirely the firm's process.
Ask: What notice do our own staff and our clients receive before their mailbox, OneDrive and private Teams messages are copied into a review set, and can sensitivity-labelled or legally privileged material be excluded before, rather than after, decryption?
Foundation-model provider
Public claim only
No model name or version is published for the eDiscovery features. The Security Copilot privacy documentation names the platform in describing the data-sharing setting: captured data 'is used to develop security specific models built on top of Azure OpenAI foundational model or Microsoft built models', and adds 'Data isn't shared with OpenAI or used to train the Azure OpenAI foundational model.' It also states that prompts 'are evaluated using GPU resources in Azure datacenters protected with Azure security and privacy controls' and links to the Azure OpenAI Service data, privacy and security page. 'Security Copilot' is Microsoft's product branding, not a model name, and no third-party model provider is named anywhere read on 2026-09-27. Predictive coding models are trained by the customer on its own review set and are not foundation models.
Ask: Which model, in which Azure region, generates review-set item summaries and drafts KeyQL queries for our tenant, and what notice will we get before that model changes?
Subprocessors
Not confirmed
No subprocessor list was located or read. The Data Protection Addendum index page states that 'the data processing and security terms are defined in Microsoft Online Services Data Protection Addendum (DPA)' and that the DPA 'shall prevail' over any conflicting terms, and publishes the current edition as a download dated 22 May 2026; the document itself is a word-processing file and was not read, and no subcontractor or subprocessor list is linked from that page. For the AI layer the Security Copilot documentation makes only a negative statement about third parties: opted-in Customer Data is 'Not shared with OpenAI ... Not shared with third parties'. That is not a subprocessor register.
Ask: Provide the current Microsoft Online Services Subcontractor List applicable to Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and Security Copilot, with each subcontractor's country and function, and our notice and objection rights when one is added.
Training on customer content
Public claim only
Training depends on two customer-controlled settings whose defaults depend on the licence. The settings are 'Allow Microsoft to capture data from Security Copilot to validate product performance using human review' and 'Allow Microsoft to capture and human review data from Security Copilot to build and validate Microsoft's security AI model'; captured data under the second 'is used to develop security specific models built on top of Azure OpenAI foundational model or Microsoft built models'. The privacy page states 'Data sharing is turned on by default' and carries a banner that its settings 'apply to customers who are not using a Microsoft 365 E5 and E7 license'. For auto-provisioned Microsoft 365 E5 and E7 tenants — the licence that carries premium eDiscovery — 'By default, the following settings are set to Off' for both. Customer Data for these purposes expressly includes prompts, information retrieved to generate responses, responses, pinned items and file uploads, and eDiscovery is named in the access table as 'Data captured within a review set of an eDiscovery search'. Microsoft states that opted-in data is not used to train the Azure OpenAI foundational model and is not shared with OpenAI, and that enabling or disabling the settings 'won't affect Microsoft's rights or responsibilities under the Microsoft Products and Services Data Protection Addendum'.
Ask: Confirm in writing that both data-sharing settings are Off in our tenant, who can change them, whether the change is audited, and that no review-set content or eDiscovery prompt has been captured for human review or model development to date.
Feedback and human review of responses
Public claim only
The documentation states 'Microsoft collects feedback on the response produced by Microsoft Security Copilot from users of the product' through an in-product control offering 'Looks right', 'Needs improvement' and 'Inappropriate', each of which can carry free-text detail. Turning it off is not a portal setting: 'A Copilot owner can turn off feedback collection for their tenant by contacting Microsoft Support through a support ticket.' Separately, the first data-sharing setting is expressly for validating product performance 'using human review', including to 'Produce metrics surrounding the usability and quality of responses and agents'. Where a file was uploaded, 'Microsoft may only capture and human-review content from uploaded files when that content is part of information retrieved to generate responses.'
Ask: If a reviewer types matter detail into the free-text box of a feedback rating on a privileged document's summary, where does that text go, who reads it, how long is it kept, and will you disable feedback collection for our tenant?
Retention of review sets, prompts and outputs
Public claim only
eDiscovery side: review-set content persists for the life of the case because items cannot be deleted from a review set and a review set cannot be deleted from a case; export packages 'expire 14 days after creation' and 'After 14 days, the export packages are automatically deleted.' Security Copilot side: Customer Data is stored 'so long as you have an active subscription to Security Copilot'; it is deleted 'within 180 days of when you delete all provisioned capacity'; 'Session data will be deleted after 180 days of inactivity'; a deletion request through the portal or support is actioned 'within 30 days'; and Customer Data shared under a data-sharing setting 'is only retained by Security Copilot for 90 days before being deleted by that team evaluating that Customer Data'.
Ask: For a matter that must be destroyed on a court order, what is the shortest path to removing every copy — review set, case, export package, Security Copilot session data and any shared data — and what evidence of destruction can you give us?
Deletion and certified erasure
Not confirmed
The documented deletion path for eDiscovery is coarse: 'You can't delete items from a review set, and you can't delete review sets from a case. To delete a review set and its data, you must delete the eDiscovery case that contains the review set', and the audit reference notes that 'You must remove any hold associated with the case before you can delete the case.' Deleting an export 'removes the export and all data contained in the export package' but 'doesn't delete data in the original location'. On the Security Copilot side the same page carries two statements that do not agree about opting out of data sharing: 'If you opt out of data sharing, Security Copilot deletes all Customer Data shared within 30 days' and, some paragraphs later, 'When you opt out of data sharing, no further Customer Data is shared. Customer Data that was shared previously is retained for not more than 180 days.' A third statement warns that turning off Microsoft 365 data access 'does not mean that any data retrieved from those Microsoft 365 services are deleted at that instant'. No certified-erasure commitment was read.
Ask: Which is correct for previously shared Customer Data on opt-out, 30 days or 180 days, and will Microsoft certify in writing the deletion of a named case, its review sets, its export packages and any Security Copilot data derived from it?
Vendor human access to content
Public claim only
Human review by Microsoft staff is the express subject of both data-sharing settings, one of which is worded as capturing data 'to validate product performance using human review' and the other as 'capture and human review data from Security Copilot to build and validate Microsoft's security AI model'; both default to Off for auto-provisioned Microsoft 365 E5 and E7 tenants and On otherwise. Where those settings are On, human review can reach prompts, retrieved information, responses, pinned items and, where retrieved to generate a response, uploaded file content. Outside those settings the documentation says only that 'Access to the systems that house your data is governed by Microsoft's certified processes' and that Security Copilot 'runs queries as the user, so it never has elevated privileges beyond what the user has'. Review-set storage is Microsoft-owned and Microsoft-managed with no customer-accessible storage credential.
Ask: With both data-sharing settings Off, under what circumstances can a Microsoft employee or subcontractor read our review-set content or Security Copilot prompts, is Customer Lockbox available for those paths, and can we obtain a log of any such access?
Access control, roles and audit
Public claim only
eDiscovery uses role-based access control with built-in or custom role groups, plus per-case membership that controls 'who can access the case and view the contents of the case'. Documented roles include Case Management, Compliance Search, Preview, Export and Custodian, and the ordinary two-week grace period that lets a user without the Preview or Export role act on someone else's initiated action 'doesn't apply when premium features are enabled in eDiscovery' — with premium features on, 'Users must be assigned the Preview and Export roles'. The audit log records eDiscovery activity including case creation, change, closure and deletion, search creation and editing, search actions such as generating statistics, creating a sample and exporting, hold creation, change and deletion, and review-set creation and review activity, with a client IP field present for activities performed in the current experience. Security Copilot brings its own grant: a set of Entra, Intune, Defender and Purview administrator roles 'automatically inherit Security Copilot owner access', including Global Administrator, Security Administrator, Conditional Access Administrator, Intune Administrator, Purview Compliance Admin and Purview Organization Management, and those assignments can be modified afterwards.
Ask: Which of our administrators inherited Security Copilot owner access on auto-provisioning, has that list been reduced, and can we enforce that only named Preview and Export role holders can see or extract review-set content?
Encryption and customer-managed keys
Public claim only
The Security Copilot documentation states that 'All data stored in Azure is automatically encrypted at rest and uses AES-256 encryption.' For review sets the documentation states that Customer Key applies: 'If your tenant is configured with Customer Key, review set content at rest is encrypted with the customer-managed key', and that there is no customer-accessible storage credential. The Product Terms state that each Core Online Service 'implements and maintains the security measures set forth in Appendix A of the DPA'; Appendix A was not read, because the Data Protection Addendum is published as a download and only its index page was read on 2026-09-27. No statement about encryption in transit to the model endpoint was read, and one note records that agent communications surfaced through email or Microsoft Teams 'may traverse global Microsoft network infrastructure during transit, and therefore may cross geographic boundaries, even when data at rest remains within the selected Workspace region'.
Ask: Is Customer Key configured for our review-set storage, and does the customer-managed key also cover Security Copilot session data, prompts and responses derived from that review set?
Independent security assurance
Public claim only
The Product Terms carry a contractual assurance table for Core Online Services. The Microsoft 365 Compliance Services row, the family that expressly includes Microsoft Purview eDiscovery, is marked 'Yes' for both SSAE 18 SOC 1 Type II and SSAE 18 SOC 2 Type II, and the section states that each Core Online Service 'also complies with the control standards and frameworks shown in the table below and implements and maintains the security measures set forth in Appendix A of the DPA'. Exception rows elsewhere in the same document refer to 'the DPA's statement of compliance with ISO 27001, ISO 27002, and ISO 27018' for certain software products, which indicates those standards are addressed in the DPA; the DPA itself was not read, so no ISO certification is recorded here. The Security Copilot documentation adds the non-specific claim that 'Security Copilot meets all Azure production data compliance standards'. No IRAP assessment and no ISO/IEC 42001 certification was found on the pages read on 2026-09-27.
Ask: Provide the current SOC 2 Type II report and bridge letter covering Microsoft 365 Compliance Services, the ISO/IEC 27001 and 27018 certificates, and the IRAP assessment status for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and Security Copilot at the Australian data centres.
Contract, DPA and Australian contracting entity
Public claim only
The governing structure is published: the Product Terms state that 'The Data Protection Addendum, or DPA ... sets forth the parties obligations with respect to the processing and security of Customer Data, Professional Services Data, and Personal Data by the Products' and that 'In the event of any conflict or inconsistency between the DPA and any other terms in Customer's licensing agreement (including these terms), the DPA shall prevail.' The current edition is dated 22 May 2026 and is published as a download; only the index page was read. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is named in the Core Online Services table and does not appear in the Exceptions to the DPA table, so no exception applies to it. Security Copilot is likewise absent from the exceptions table, and its own documentation confirms that 'Customer Data shared with Security Copilot is governed by the Product Terms, Data Protection Addendum, and documentation applicable to Security Copilot'. The Australian contracting entity, its ACN or ABN, governing law, forum and liability position are not in any document read and are not recorded here.
Ask: Which Microsoft entity will contract with us for Australia, what is its ACN or ABN, what governing law and forum apply, and what is the liability position for a breach affecting review-set content?
Australian data residency and cross-border processing
Not confirmed
The evidence points in more than one direction and a firm must reconcile it. In favour of Australian residency: the Product Terms commit that where a tenant is provisioned in Australia, Exchange Online mailbox content, SharePoint Online site content, OneDrive files and Teams chat messages are stored at rest 'only within that Geo'; and the review-set documentation states 'The storage is provisioned in the region that matches the case's geo, consistent with Microsoft 365 data residency commitments.' Against it: the 'Location of Customer Data at Rest for Core Online Services' section of the Product Terms has bullets for Office 365 Services, Azure, Intune, Power Platform, Dynamics 365, several Defender services, Dragon Copilot and Windows 365, and no bullet for the Microsoft 365 Compliance Services family to which eDiscovery belongs; and Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is not in the Advanced Data Residency eligible-services table for Purview, whose note states the list is complete 'as of February 2026'. The Security Copilot layer then displaces the residency commitment altogether where it is used, in terms: 'Microsoft 365 data accessed by Security Copilot will be processed and stored in location(s) described herein, regardless of the location in which the data was processed or stored pursuant to EU Data Boundary Services and the data residency commitments under the 'Customer Data at Rest for Core Online Services' section of the Product Terms before the data was accessed by Security Copilot.' Security Copilot storage location is fixed at workspace creation, preselected to the tenant's Microsoft Entra geography and unchangeable afterwards; prompt evaluation can be set to Australia (ANZ), the EU, the UK or the US, but for an auto-provisioned tenant whose storage location is not in the EU the default is that 'prompts are processed globally (US, UK, EU, ANZ) depending on locality and GPU availability'.
Ask: For our Australian tenant, is the Security Copilot workspace storage location Australia and the prompt evaluation location set to Australia (ANZ) only rather than global, will Microsoft warrant that review-set content summarised by Security Copilot neither leaves Australia nor loses the Core Online Services residency commitment, and will you add eDiscovery to an Advanced Data Residency commitment?
Incident notification
Not confirmed
No incident-notification obligation was read. The Product Terms point all data-protection obligations to the Data Protection Addendum and state that the DPA prevails over conflicting terms; the DPA is published as a download dated 22 May 2026 and only its index page was read on 2026-09-27, so its security-incident notification clause, its notification period and its Appendix A security measures are unverified here. Nothing in the Purview eDiscovery or Security Copilot documentation read states a notification period, references the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, or addresses notification of an incident at a subcontractor.
Ask: Quote the security-incident notification clause of the current Data Protection Addendum, state the period from Microsoft becoming aware, and confirm how Microsoft will support our assessment and notification obligations under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme for review-set content.
Change notice for features, defaults and models
Not confirmed
Several defaults change on Microsoft's timetable rather than the firm's. Security Copilot was rolled out to eligible Microsoft 365 E5 customers from 18 November 2025 by 'zero click activation', auto-provisioning a capacity, a default workspace, a storage location, a prompt-evaluation location, data-sharing preferences, Microsoft 365 data access set to On and a set of administrator roles inheriting Security Copilot owner access, with notification by Microsoft 365 admin centre message and in-product banners. The Purview source in Security Copilot 'is enabled by default'. The documentation also flags future change: SCU overage billing 'will be throttled at a future date' with 30 days' notice, several eDiscovery capabilities are marked preview, and the product has been renamed, with 'eDiscovery (Premium)' now sitting on a page titled 'Microsoft Purview eDiscovery legacy solutions'. No notice period for a model change or a default change was read.
Ask: What advance written notice will we receive before a Security Copilot capability, default setting or model changes in our tenant, and can we require that new AI features in Purview arrive disabled for us?
Export and exit
Public claim only
Export is a documented first-class function rather than an exit concession. Search results export as PST files or individual messages for mailbox items and as copies of native documents for SharePoint and OneDrive; review-set exports are configurable to selected documents, all filtered documents or all documents, and carry computed document metadata that can be loaded into a third-party review application. Export packages can be downloaded programmatically through the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery API with the eDiscovery.Download.Read application permission. Two limits apply: packages 'expire 14 days after creation' and are then automatically deleted, and the download links 'are for individual use only' and may become invalid if used by another person. Deleting an export removes the package but not the data in its original location.
Ask: Before we close a matter, what is the complete export set for a review set — documents, native files, metadata, tags, prediction scores and Security Copilot summaries — and are the AI-generated summaries exportable at all?
Connectors and data flowing outward
Not confirmed
Two outward paths are documented. First, export to third-party review applications, after which the data is governed by that application rather than by Microsoft. Second, and the one that changes the compliance position inside Microsoft, the Security Copilot connection: 'Accessing data from Microsoft 365 services' defaults to On for auto-provisioned tenants, the Purview source is enabled by default, and with it on 'Relevant Customer Data may be copied, processed, and stored by Security Copilot to provide responses', with that copy then governed by Security Copilot's own residency, retention and security practices rather than those of the Core Online Service it came from. Turning the access off is possible in Owner settings but the documentation warns it 'will limit Security Copilot's ability to work with Microsoft 365 products'. Guest user access to a review set for external reviewers is a separate outward path and is a preview feature.
Ask: Confirm whether Security Copilot's access to Microsoft 365 services is currently On in our tenant, what review-set content it has already copied, and what the practical loss is if we turn it off for eDiscovery only.
Open-web retrieval
Not confirmed
Nothing read on 2026-09-27 describes any open-web search or browsing by the eDiscovery features or by Security Copilot in Purview. The documented sources are the customer's Microsoft 365 services data processed by Purview, Customer Data generated by Purview, review-set content, uploaded files and Microsoft Purview product documentation, from which Security Copilot can produce 'AI-generated summaries from Microsoft Purview product documentation'. The Product Terms elsewhere exclude the Data Protection Addendum from Bing search services and from 'any component of a Product that is powered by Bing, as disclosed in the product documentation', which is a general carve-out and was not stated to apply here. Absence of a statement is not a statement that no web retrieval occurs.
Ask: Does Security Copilot in Purview make any request to Bing or any open-web index when drafting a query or summarising a review-set item, and if any component is powered by Bing, is it therefore outside the Data Protection Addendum?
Actions the system can take on content
Not confirmed
The product performs consequential actions on live content, and they are operator-initiated rather than AI-initiated. Holds preserve content and override user deletion. Search-and-delete removes email messages, Microsoft Teams chat messages and 'Copilot and AI application data' across the organisation. Adding content to a review set copies it into Microsoft-managed storage and decrypts protected content automatically. Deleting a case deletes its review sets and their data, and cannot be done until holds are removed. Nothing documented lets Security Copilot or a predictive coding model tag, withhold, delete or produce content on its own: Security Copilot drafts a query and writes a summary, and predictive coding applies a score that a person then filters on. The separate Security Copilot agents are not automatic either: 'a customer's organization is required to set up and deploy agents'.
Ask: Which roles in our tenant can run a search-and-delete across the organisation, is a second person's approval required, and are any Security Copilot agents deployed against Purview data?
Human review before reliance
Not confirmed
Both AI outputs sit in front of a person by design rather than by an enforced control. A drafted KeyQL query is presented to the operator, who runs it: 'Copilot translates natural language to KeyQL without requiring you to learn how to construct a KeyQL query', which means an operator may run a query they could not have written and cannot fully read. A Security Copilot summary is offered inside the review-set item view, where the reviewer also has the item itself. Predictive coding scores are a filter, not a determination. No documented setting forces a reviewer to open the underlying item before accepting a summary, records that they did, or marks a document as reviewed with AI assistance, and the in-product feedback control is the only accuracy signal described.
Ask: Can we require and evidence that a reviewer opened the native item before relying on a Security Copilot summary, and does the audit log record which items were summarised and by whom?
