Microsoft Purview – What Changed?

In April 2022 Microsoft rebranded the compliance and risk management tools under the Microsoft Purview name. There are no feature changes, this is just a rebranding. Click here for more information.

In most cases, this is just replacing Microsoft 365 Compliance with Microsoft Purview in the product names. However, inside the Microsoft Purview compliance portal (formerly known as the Compliance Center) there are three name changes of note:

  • Information Governance has become Data Lifecycle Management but is still the home of retention labels & policies
  • Core eDiscovery is now eDiscovery (Standard)
  • Advanced eDiscovery is now eDiscovery (Premium)

Note: The Microsoft Purview compliance portal URL is the same as the compliance center.

So why the name change?

Previously we referred to these features as the Compliance features of Microsoft 365 but they also include information governance and privacy tools, as well as oversight of sensitive content in your tenant, which is more than ‘just’ compliance. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word Purview as:

  • The body or enacting part of a statute / the limit, purpose, or scope of a statute
  • The range or limit of authority, competence, responsibility, concern, or intention
  • Range of vision, understanding, or cognizance

It is the second and third definitions that speak to the information governance, privacy and compliance features that Microsoft Purview provides.

It is also worth remembering that when Microsoft renamed the security features to Microsoft Defender that also added a lot of features including cross-cloud functionality at the same time as the rebranding and that caused a lot of confusion amongst customers. By giving us just the rebranding to Microsoft Purview, I believe they aimed to avoid this. And, hopefully, the investment into the Purview suite will see many new features going forward as separate announcements.

We will cover these new features as they are announced in our free Microsoft 365 Quarterly ‘Ketchup’ webinars. Register for our next webinar here.