Data Loss Prevention Rolling Out for Office 2016

Data loss prevention (DLP) is a set of governance and management controls that limit leakage of an organization’s sensitive content, such as credit card numbers, by combining identification of such data with appropriate data handling policies. DLP now works with Microsoft-hosted OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online documents and is also enabled in some Office 2016 applications. Organizations subject to data handling regulations and companies with bring-your-own-device policies can benefit from DLP. However, older server and desktop applications do not support DLP, and the new DLP features are only available with an enterprise-level Office 365 plan.

New DLP Features in SharePoint, OneDrive for Business

New DLP features in Microsoft-hosted SharePoint and OneDrive for Business implement data controls in a two-stage process:

• Discovery of sensitive content
• Enforcement of data handling policies.

These actions are set up by an administrator within the Office 365 Compliance Center, a part of the organization’s Office 365 Portal. The Compliance Center also provides incident and trend reporting after DLP policies are activated.