Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance: Monitoring With Privacy Controls

A financial services firm activates communication compliance to satisfy FINRA Rule 3110 (supervisory review) and SEC requirements for communication monitoring. The policy monitors all employee communications for potential violations — insider trading language, customer complaint mishandling, gifts and entertainment, and conflicts of interest. Within a month, the review queue has 12,000 flagged items. The compliance team of 3 reviewers investigates and finds that the ML classifiers flag routine business communications because the training data doesn't distinguish between discussing a stock recommendation with a client (normal) and sharing material non-public information (violation). The false positive rate exceeds 95%. The compliance team can't review the volume, starts falling behind, and the supervisory review obligation that triggered the deployment isn't being satisfied because the tool generates more noise than the team can process.

Communication compliance done right starts with policy scope that matches reviewer capacity and regulatory priority. Define the specific violation types the regulation requires monitoring for — not 'everything.' Configure ML classifiers with the organization's communication patterns so they distinguish between normal business language and actual policy violations. Start with the highest-priority violation types (material non-public information, customer complaint mishandling) and expand as reviewer capacity grows. Use communication compliance alongside insider risk management so behavioral signals from IRM help prioritize communication review. Implement pseudonymization so reviewers see flagged content without identifying the employee until investigation is formally opened. Establish the review cadence that keeps the queue manageable. Done with this discipline, communication compliance satisfies supervisory review obligations. Done as blanket monitoring, it generates noise nobody can process.