In 2020, an employee at Vertifore accidentally exposed 27.7 million Texas driver records,
names, addresses, birth dates and license numbers by storing three data files in an external
storage location.
No malicious hacking, no bad intentions, just routine work that went wrong, and the company
didn't even discover it themselves.
A third party had to tell them.
That's the exact problem Microsoft Peruvio Data Loss Prevention DLP for short solves.
It's not built to stop hackers, it's designed to stop your own people from accidentally leaking
sensitive data. By the end of this episode, you'll know what Microsoft Peruvio DLP really
is, why every business needs it, and how it quietly watches over your data across email,
files, chats, devices, and even AI tools.
The Data League Problem, why DLP exists?
Before we talk about the solution, let's understand the scale of the problem. Here's a number
that matters. 58% of data leaks are accidental. Not malicious, not some sophisticated attack,
just someone forwarding an email to the wrong person or attaching the wrong file. Human
error is the biggest security vulnerability most organizations have. And it's getting
worse last year, 74% of organizations, nearly three out of four, reported a data incident.
Yet organizations using disconnected security tools had 2.8 times more incidents, more tools
meant more problems. Because when your security tools don't talk to each other, you get gaps.
And data leaks through gaps. So what did organizations do before DLP? They locked everything
down, disabled USB ports, outlawed personal email, restricted everything. The problem, that
kills productivity. People need to share files to do their jobs. And when you make it too
hard, they find workarounds. They use personal Gmail, upload to Dropbox or put data on USB
drives anyway. The locks become useless. DLP takes a completely different approach. Instead
of blocking everything, it watches three things. What the data is, who's handling it and where
it's going. Then it enforces rules automatically. The core idea is simple. First, you identify
what counts as sensitive credit card numbers, health records, confidential contracts. Then
you monitor that data across all your Microsoft 365 services, email, files, chats, devices.
And when someone tries to do something risky, DLP either warns them or blocks the action.
It's not about locking people out. It's about catching honest mistakes before they become
headlines. The office building analogy. So how does DLP actually do all that? Let's build
a mental model. Imagine your organization is an office building with different departments
on different floors and different security levels for different areas. The lobby has a
reception desk and that's your identity system. Entra ID. It checks badges at the door. Are
you who you say you are? Good, you're in. But here's the thing. Once you're inside, data
moves constantly. People walk through hallways carrying files. They take documents to meeting
rooms. They send papers through the mail room and they bring laptops home at night. And
that's where the old approach fails. Because checking badges at the front door doesn't
tell you what people are carrying out. DLP is like a team of security guards who don't
just check badges. They look at what's in people's hands. A visitor walking out with a stack
of confidential documents. The guard stops them and employee putting client files into their
personal bag. The guard asks questions. These guards work everywhere in the building in the
mail room scanning every outgoing email that's exchanged online in the file storage room
watching files being shared share point and one drive in the conference rooms monitoring
chat messages teams and on laptops. People take home endpoint DLP protecting devices even
when offline. And there's a new guard that just arrived. The one standing next to the AI
assistant making sure it doesn't hand sensitive data to the wrong person. That's copilot DLP.
The building gets smarter but the guards keep up. Exchange online protecting email. Let's
start in the mail room because email is still the most common way data walks out of your
organization. One wrong reply. All one misplaced attachment or one moment of clicking send
before your brain catches up. That's how most accidental leaks happen. Exchange online DLP
scans every email before it sent both the body text and any attachments and it's not just
doing simple keyword searches. It's using deep content analysis pattern recognition that
catches credit card numbers following a specific format and passing a checksum test proximity
detection that finds a name and an address right next to each other and machine learning
classifiers that get smarter over time. Now imagine this an employee finishes a spreadsheet
with customer credit card numbers. They need to work on it at home so they draft an email
to their personal Gmail address and attach the file they hit send. But before that email
actually leaves exchange DLP scans it finds the credit card numbers in the attachment
recognizes the destination is outside the organization and blocks the send. What does
the employee see a policy tip a pop-up that says something like this email contains sensitive
information and can't be sent to external recipients. Depending on how the policy is
configured they might have the option to override by providing a business justification explaining
why the send is legitimate. That justification gets logged. So if it's a pattern on the same
person doing this every Friday an admin can investigate the point is the email never
reaches the outside it's called before it leaves the building and every match is logged.
So admins can see exactly what was blocked who tried to send it and why the SharePoint
and one drive protecting files at rest and in motion email isn't the only place data
leaks happen. What about the files already sitting in your SharePoint sites or synced
to your one drive that's where the next layer of DLP protection comes in SharePoint and
one drive DLP watches files in two states at rest means the file is stored on the site.
In motion means someone is sharing it with someone else you can create policies that scan
existing files for anything sensitive if DLP find something it shouldn't it can flag
the file or even quarantine it automatically. The quarantine feature is relatively new when
DLP finds a violating file it moves that file to a secure location only admins can reach.
The original file gets replaced with a tombstone file it's just a plain text message explaining
why the file is missing and what the user should do if they think it's a mistake think of
it as a sign that says this file has been secured talk to your admin if you needed for
external sharing DLP gets even more specific you can block sharing to particular domains say
you have a competitor you don't want receiving your internal documents just add their domain
to a block list but here's what makes it really useful that restriction applies retroactively
if a file was already shared with that domain before you created the policy DLP can revoke
that access it's not just locking the door going forward it's checking who's already inside
let's look at a real scenario a contractor working with your company accidentally shares a folder
marked confidential with the entire organization that means hundreds of people now have access DLP
detects the sensitivity label on the documents it sees the sharing activity and it restricts
access to only the intended audience the damages contained before most people even realize
the folder was shared one drive functions as your personal file vault you store your files there
and work on them but DLP watches when you try to sync sensitive files to a personal device say
someone drags a highly confidential document from one drive into their local downloads folder DLP
can block that action because once that file leaves the cloud you lose control over it the guard
at the door checks what's leaving the building even if it's from your own desk teams DLP protecting chat
and channel messages work today doesn't just happen in email or shared folders a lot of it happens
in teams private chats channel conversations quick messages back and forth and people share sensitive
information there all the time a project manager types a client's social security number into a chat
an engineer pays confidential code into a channel with external guests a salesperson drops a credit
card number into a direct message no attachment needed no file required just text flying across
the conversation teams DLP scans those messages to it monitors private chats and channel conversations
and it looks at the message content itself not just attached files so if someone types a social
security number directly into a chat DLP catches it the system can block the message from being sent
show a policy tip explaining why and log the attempt for review let's walk through a specific
scenario you have a channel where you collaborate with external partners someone on your team types
here's the clients ssn 123456789 before that message appears in the channel teams DLP scans it
it recognizes the social security number pattern it sees the message is heading to a channel with
external guests and it blocks the message from being sent the person who typed it sees a warning the
sensitive number never reaches the channel and an alert gets logged for the compliance team teams
feels informal people treated like instant messaging they type things they'd never put in an email
but a leaked ssn in a team's chat is just as damaging as one in an email attachment DLP treats
them exactly the same way endpoint DLP protecting devices so we've put guards in the mail room the file
storage and the conference rooms but what about the actual device someone is using right now
think about a laptop at a coffee shop a desktop in a home office or a device on a plane with no internet
connection that's where npoint DLP steps in endpoint DLP extends protection to the physical device itself
including windows and macOS it watches everything that happens on that machine and it can block or
audit actions that no cloud-based policy can reach things like copying files to a USB drive printing
a confidential document uploading to a personal cloud service like dropbox pasting sensitive text into
an unapproved browser or even sending files over Bluetooth here's something that surprises most
people endpoint DLP works even when the device is offline the policies are cashed locally on the
machine so if someone on a plane tries to copy a confidential file to a USB drive DLP still blocks
it because the rules are already on the device they don't need to phone home how does it work a
small agent runs on the device it uses the same deep content analysis we talked about earlier pattern
recognition proximity detection machine learning but instead of scanning email or sharepoint it scans
content as it moves across the device when you copy a file paste text or try to print the agent checks
it every time it's watching everything that touches sensitive data let me give you a concrete example
an employee opens a file labeled highly confidential and copies a section of text to paste into a
personal gmail tab endpoint DLP detects the sensitivity label on the source file sees the paste is
going to an unapproved browser and blocks it a warning pops up explaining why and the action never
completes endpoint DLP covers a lot of ground copying to a USB drive gets blocked printing a confidential
document gets blocked or audited uploading to dropbox or google drive gets blocked even pasting into
an AI tool like chat GPT gets blocked and less obvious actions like copying to a network share
or remote desktop session can also be monitored getting devices set up is done through internal group
policy Microsoft recommends starting in simulation mode just like with other DLP policies you run the
policy see what would have been blocked review the data tune the rules then enforce no surprises
and you won't break any legitimate workflows recent updates have made endpoint DLP even more powerful
as of 2026 it can detect and block exfiltration of files that haven't been saved yet someone
pasting sensitive data into a new document and trying to copy it out before ever hitting save
and on co-pilot plus PCs it can prevent windows recall from capturing snapshots of sensitive content
the gods on your devices are getting smarter all the time co-pilot and AI DLP the new frontier so
we've got gods in the mail room the file storage the conference rooms and on every laptop but there's
a new corner of the office that needs watching the AI assistant Microsoft 365 co-pilot can access
your organization's data emails files meetings chats that's incredibly powerful but it also creates
a new risk when someone asks co-pilot a question they're essentially asking it to pull sensitive
information from across your entire organization and handed to them in a neat summary here's the
scenario a user opens co-pilot in word and types summarize the quarterly financials from the
confidential folder without dlp co-pilot might pull that data and present it in the response even if
the user has legitimate access the question creates a new copy of sensitive information in a new
context once that summary exists in a new document it can be shared copied or leaked just like any
other file dlp for co-pilot changes that by controlling what co-pilot can do with sensitive information
it can block co-pilot from generating responses that contain sensitive data in our scenario co-pilot
sees the sensitivity label on the quarterly financials recognizes the content is confidential
and either blocks the summary entirely or excludes the sensitive parts this protection works across
word excel powerpoint teams and outlook anywhere co-pilot appears Microsoft deployed default
dlp policies for co-pilot in simulation mode in early 2026 so every tenant has a starting point but
here's the catch those default policies are in simulation mode not actively blocking anything
until you configure them many organizations think they're protected because they see the policy
in the portal but unless enforcement is turned on co-pilot is still handing out sensitive data
there's another angle too dlp can protect against the prompt itself if a user tries to paste
sensitive data into a public AI tool like chat gpt endpoint dlp can block that paste using the same
agent that blocks usb copies the risk isn't just what co-pilot reveals it's what your users accidentally
feed into external AI models and here's a recent update that matters as of 2026 co-pilot will not
interact with files that carry sensitivity labels at all no matter where you open them the label
travels with the file and co-pilot respects it that's a clean boundary if a file is labeled highly
confidential co-pilot won't touch it avoiding common mistakes now all of this sounds great on paper
but here's the thing real world dlp deployments fail all the time it's almost never the technologies fault
it's how the organization approaches it the biggest mistake people make is treating dlp as an
IT project a team of admins sits in a room configures some policies and deploys them then users get
blocked from doing legitimate work help desk calls spike policies get rolled back the security team
loses credibility that's not how this works the dlp is a governance program not an IT project you need
business stakeholders in the room legal compliance HR finance people who understand how data actually
flows because if you block a workflow finance depends on to close the quarter you'll hear about it
second mistake too many sensitivity labels some organizations launch with 15 or more labels nested
sub labels names like semi restricted internal use only external sharing permitted with written
approval users look at that and do one of three things they ignore labels entirely but they apply
the default label to everything or they pick the lowest restriction to avoid friction none of
those protect your data keep it simple start with three to five labels public internal confidential
highly confidential expand only after people have adopted the basics third mistake only covering
email this one's incredibly common an organization configures exchange dlp checks the box declares the
job done but that policy does nothing for teams chats nothing for sharepoint bulk uploads nothing
for someone copying files to usb drive you need to cover all the channels email sharepoint one drive
teams and points and copilot each one is a separate door data can walk out of force mistake skipping
simulation mode the temptation is to turn policies on immediately because you want protection now
but that's how you break things always start in audit mode let the policy run log what it would
have blocked and review the data you'll find legitimate workflows you didn't account for you'll
see false positives you need to tune then move to policy tips warnings that educate users without
blocking then after your confident turn enforcement on here's a practical 90 day plan day one deploy
in audit mode only day 30 analyze the alerts and identify patterns day 60 tune your labels and
exceptions based on what you've learned day 90 turn on enforcement targeting a false positive rate
under five percent remember the number from the beginning 58% of leaks are accidental dlp isn't
about punishing users it's about catching honest mistakes before they become headlines so here's
what Microsoft purview dlp actually is it's a unified set of security guards that protect sensitive
data across email files chats devices and ai tools it watches data in all three states at rest in
motion and in use and it uses deep content analysis to understand what the data is not just
what it looks like the goal isn't to lock everything down the goal is to stop the 58% of accidental
leaks while letting people do their jobs because the vertifore story on 27.7 million records exposed by
one innocent action happens every day in organizations that don't have these protections in place next time
you hear about a data breach that was just an honest mistake remember dlp exists exactly for that
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