Microsoft Purview for Copilot Readiness: Deploy AI Safely With Data Governance

Microsoft reports 15 million paid Copilot seats as of early 2026. Industry assessments across hundreds of M365 tenants consistently find that the majority of enterprises aren't ready for safe Copilot deployment — despite having already purchased licenses. The gaps are consistent: SharePoint sites with permissions inherited from years of accumulation that nobody has audited, Teams channels where guests still have access from projects that ended two years ago, OneDrive folders shared with 'everyone' during a quick collaboration that was never restricted, and sensitivity labels either not deployed or deployed with a taxonomy nobody follows. Copilot inherits all of these permissions. Every summary, every draft, every search result Copilot generates draws from whatever the user can technically access — including the content they shouldn't be browsing. The readiness gap isn't about Copilot configuration. It's about the years of permission accumulation that Copilot now amplifies.

Copilot readiness through Purview follows a specific sequence. First, assess — automated readiness assessment across M365 licensing, Entra identity, Purview compliance posture, and SharePoint Advanced Management. Second, remediate oversharing — identify sites and channels with excessive permissions using Purview and SAM, restrict access using sensitivity labels and site-level controls. Third, deploy information protection — sensitivity labels with auto-labeling so Copilot respects data classification. Fourth, enable DLP for Copilot — policies that prevent sensitive data types from being processed in AI interactions. Fifth, activate DSPM for AI — ongoing visibility into how sensitive data flows through Copilot interactions. Sixth, deploy Copilot to the first cohort with monitoring. Done in this sequence, Copilot activates safely. Done out of sequence (Copilot first, governance later), the organization discovers the gaps through incidents rather than assessment.