Microsoft Purview: Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Small and Mid-Sized Organizations

1 — No Written Policies: The Foundation

Purview is the tool you use to bring your written policies to life, and without written policies, it’s like trying to build a house without a blueprint.

Common Gaps

• No Classification Policy: You need to provide employees with definitions of what constitutes “Confidential,” “Internal,” or “Public” data.
• No Acceptable Use Guidance: Everyone needs clear rules on what data can be shared externally and how to share it securely. Without this, it is difficult to set up DLP rules that everyone will abide by.
• No Realistic Retention Policies: This is often the trickiest to get right. You need retention rules that meet the needs of the business, meet compliance requirements, AND are feasible to implement and maintain. Often, situations arise where Compliance demands event-based retention (e.g., “keep for 7 years after contract termination”), Legal demands that all data is deleted as soon as is feasible, but the Sales group wants to keep all files forever.

How to Fix It

• Start Small. Draft simple, realistic policies that reflect your actual data governance capacity. Start with as few labels as feasible. You can always add more later once you know you need them.
• Use Data Explorer to identify what kinds of sensitive data you have and engage the business groups that own them to determine the best way to define how data should be shared securely, both internally and externally.
• Collaborate With Compliance, Legal, HR, and other stakeholders early to align expectations with technical feasibility.  (For example, SharePoint tagging is required to trigger event-based retention, and setting that up is a significant effort in itself.)

2 — Policies Without Authority

Even with policies in place, many SMBs lack the governance structure to enforce them.

Symptoms

• Policies are ignored because no one owns enforcement.
• IT or Information Security lacks the authority to challenge business units on risky behavior and block risky data usage.

How to Fix It

• Create a process to triage, investigate, and escalate DLP alerts. Often, these incidents will need to be reviewed and handled outside of the technology group. Everyone should understand their role.
• Establish a Data Governance Group with cross-functional representation.
• Empower IT with clear escalation paths and executive backing.

3 — No Time or People

Purview isn’t a “set it and forget it” solution. It requires ongoing administration, tuning, and user engagement. It takes time, effort, and attention to both deploy it and “keep the lights on” once it is in place.

Reality Check

• Most small and mid-sized organizations don’t have a dedicated data governance team.
• Implementing Purview is seen as a technology project rather than an ongoing program to address a business requirement. IT is often already stretched thin and often lacks the expertise needed to deploy good data governance.

How to Fix It

• Use Purview’s built-in templates and automation to reduce manual effort. (Again, keep it simple.)
• Consider fractional governance support– either through consultants or a shared internal team, so you can have on-demand expertise.
• Prioritize and secure the high-risk areas first (e.g., finance, HR, product development) and expand Purview gradually to the rest of the company. 

4 — Limited Automation in E3 Licensing

E3 licensing includes a full suite of labeling, retention, and DLP controls, but not advanced automation features like auto-labeling, default labeling, and insider risk management.

Consequences

• Heavy reliance on user training and manual labeling.
• Inconsistent adoption and increased risk of human error.

How to Fix It

• Consider the E5 Compliance add-on to E3, especially for people in high-risk groups, to provide automation capabilities over their data.
• Use default labeling on new documents and storage locations to reduce gaps in labeling and DLP protections.
• Focus on awareness campaigns to reinforce acceptable use policies.

5 — Classification Accuracy

While Microsoft provides a comprehensive set of out-of-the-box sensitive information classifiers, they do need to be tested and often tuned to be more accurate prior to rolling out Purview services. This is critical so that false positives and negatives are minimized.

Impact

• If staff notice inaccuracies during their “first impression” of Purview, it can cause people to lose trust in the system.
• Classification gaps can lead to both unprotected data and overprotected data that disrupts workflow.
• Teams lose confidence in automation.

How to Fix It

• Plan to provide time and energy toward testing and tuning classifiers. This includes identifying custom data types that are specific to your business (e.g., customer IDs, contract numbers) and eventually building definitions for them.
• Leverage Purview simulation modes to validate Purview’s expected behavior and identify gaps proactively. 
• Spot-check live data and validate classifiers with real-world samples before rolling out policies.
• Use Exact Data Match (EDM) for high-confidence detection.

6 — Automation Comes Last, Not First

Many organizations expect Purview to automate everything from day one. Most of the time, automation is nearer to the end of the rollout rather than the beginning.

What Happens

• Momentum stalls when manual processes are required early on.
• Teams lose interest before benefits materialize.

How to Fix It

• Set expectations with the stakeholders: automation follows discovery, classification, and policy definition. This will take longer than you expect.
• Celebrate small wins—like successful compliance audits or DLP alert reductions—to maintain momentum.
• Build a roadmap with phased milestones and discuss it frequently.

7 — Inadequate Focus on Communication and Training

A successful Purview deployment is 20% technical and 80% people and process.  Making sure staff know why the changes are happening and how to work them into their day-to-day processes is critical.  This needs to be communicated, and an effective training program must be provided to everyone.

Result

• People don’t know why data protection is important, so adoption of the controls never takes off.  Managers complain that it takes away from productivity.
• No one knows the “right” way to do things and they become frustrated by DLP and other controls getting in their way.

How to Fix It

• Provide data literacy training to all staff that emphasizes the “why” in your written data governance policies and the “how” of applying labels and sharing data securely.
• Ask your non-technology executives to partner in emphasizing the importance of protecting data. Data protection mandates should come from the top down, with the technology or infosec teams in a supporting role.

Build internal change management (OCM) capability or partner with external experts to deliver both initial and ongoing reinforcement training.

👉 Related: See how our Organizational Change Management Services support adoption.

Final Thoughts

Microsoft Purview can be transformative in securing your data, but only if implemented with clear policies, realistic expectations, and a phased approach. Like most compliance or security efforts, success lies not in doing everything at once, but in doing the right things first.  If you are wondering where to start, begin with visibility. Know your data, define your policies, and build from there.  The rest will follow– with the right guidance and governance.

We help organizations of all sizes get started on their data governance journey, from pilot programs all the way through enterprise-wide rollouts. Let us know if we can help!

Ready to Take Control of Your Data?

Secure your business with Microsoft Purview the right way with clear policies, a phased rollout, and expert guidance from eGroup. Start small, build confidence, and scale securely.