What is data loss prevention (DLP) feature used for in Microsoft 365?

Organizations have sensitive information under their control such as financial data, proprietary data, credit card numbers, health records, or social security numbers. To help protect this sensitive data and reduce risk, they need a way to prevent their users from inappropriately sharing it with people who shouldn't have it. This practice is called data loss prevention (DLP).

DLP detects sensitive items by using deep content analysis, not by just a simple text scan. Content is analyzed for primary data matches to keywords, by the evaluation of regular expressions, by internal function validation, and by secondary data matches that are in proximity to the primary data match. Beyond that DLP also uses machine learning algorithms and other methods to detect content that matches your DLP policies.