Microsoft Purview · Thunder Bay
You probably already own more of this than you think.
Microsoft Purview is the data governance and compliance side of Microsoft 365 — labels, data loss prevention, retention, legal holds and audit. Most of it is switched off by default, and a fair amount of it is already in your licence.
Bought, paid for, never turned on.
Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes a real set of governance tools. Data loss prevention for email and files. Sensitivity labels. Retention policies, including Teams chat. Litigation Hold. eDiscovery with hold and export. Audit logging. Archiving up to 1.5 TB per mailbox.
Almost none of it does anything until somebody configures it. We do that work — and we start by telling you what your current licence already covers, so you are not sold an upgrade you do not need. Pairs naturally with our managed IT services and our backup and recovery work, which covers the ground Purview deliberately does not.
- Licence entitlement review before anything is bought
- Sensitivity labels designed around how your team actually files
- Data loss prevention policies, piloted before they block anything
- Retention and disposal schedules that match your obligations
- Legal holds and eDiscovery collections when counsel asks
- Audit logging configured and its retention limits explained
When people call us about this
- A lawyer has asked for every email mentioning something
- An insurer or funder is asking how records are retained
- Staff are emailing client information to personal accounts
- Someone left and nobody knows what left with them
- A board wants to know where the data physically sits
What we set up and run
Configured properly, piloted before enforcement, and documented so the next person can follow it.
Sensitivity Labels
Classification that travels with the file. Labels can apply encryption, restrict who opens a document, and mark it visibly. Manual labelling is included in Business Premium; automatic labelling is not.
Data Loss Prevention
Rules that spot a social insurance number or a health card in an outgoing message and stop it, warn the sender, or just report quietly while you tune it. Covers Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive on Business Premium.
Retention & Disposal
Keep records for as long as you must, then dispose of them deliberately rather than by accident. We will also tell you plainly where retention stops and backup has to start.
eDiscovery & Legal Holds
Preserving mailboxes and sites the moment litigation is anticipated, then searching, collecting and exporting to counsel's specification. We have run full document productions to outside counsel, including the awkward parts.
Audit Logging
Who opened it, who sent it, who deleted it. Audit (Standard) is included and keeps most activity for 180 days. If you need longer, that is a licensing conversation and we will have it honestly.
Entitlement Review
A written answer to one question: what does your current licence already give you, and what would you actually have to buy? We would rather turn on what you own than sell you an upgrade.
What Business Premium covers, and what it doesn't
The honest version. Verified against Microsoft's own plan comparison, published 1 August 2026.
Included in Business Premium
- eDiscovery (Standard), including hold and export
- Litigation Hold
- Audit (Standard)
- Data loss prevention for email and files
- Manual sensitivity labelling
- Retention policies and labels, including Teams chat
- Exchange archiving up to 1.5 TB
- Compliance Manager
Needs an add-on
- Automatic sensitivity labelling
- Endpoint DLP and DLP for Teams chat
- Records management and rules-based retention
- eDiscovery (Premium) and Audit (Premium)
- Insider Risk Management
- Information Barriers and Privileged Access Management
Microsoft sells a Purview Suite built for Business Premium at CAD $13.60 per user per month billed yearly, capped at 300 seats, as listed in September 2026. Narrower add-ons also exist. You do not have to move to E3 or E5.
One thing Canadian organisations should know
If your tenant was signed up in Canada, Microsoft commits under its Product Terms to storing Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams data in Canada, at rest, by default. That commitment does not automatically extend to Purview.
Purview service data is covered only by the paid Advanced Data Residency add-on, and even then only for six services: data loss prevention, information barriers, information protection, both audit tiers, and data lifecycle management. eDiscovery, Insider Risk Management, Communication Compliance and Compliance Manager are outside it, and Microsoft does not publish where their service data is held.
That matters for a health authority, a First Nation, a law firm or anyone answering to a board about data location. It is a question worth asking before you build a compliance programme on top of it — and it is one we will answer straight, including when the answer is that Microsoft has not said. More on this in our Purview explainer and in our note on Canadian data sovereignty.
Real engagement
Thirty-four paid licences belonged to people who had already left
licences recovered and mailboxes preserved, not deleted — anonymised, with no invented figures.
See all case studies →