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Auditing and eDiscovery are two critical components within the field of information governance and compliance, especially in modern digital workplaces. These processes help organizations monitor and analyze their data to ensure compliance with legal, regulatory, and organizational standards.
Auditing is the process of tracking and recording user activities and other system actions within an IT environment. In Microsoft 365, auditing enables organizations to monitor and investigate actions taken on their data across Microsoft services. This is crucial for security purposes and for fulfilling compliance and regulatory requirements.
Auditing functions in Microsoft 365 include the Unified Audit Log (UAL), which contains events from various Microsoft services such as SharePoint, Exchange, Dynamics 365, and Azure AD. The data captured by UAL encompasses file accesses, system logins, administrative changes, and more.
For Microsoft 365, the following table highlights key auditing features:
Feature | Description |
---|---|
Audit Logging | Automatically records various user, admin, system, and policy actions within Microsoft 365 services. |
Audit Log Search | Allows administrators to search the unified audit log to find specific activities and analyze them for compliance and investigation purposes. |
Alert Policies | Enables the creation of custom alerts that trigger notifications based on specific actions or events, enhancing the ability to respond to potential issues. |
Retention Policies | Ensures that audit logs are retained for a specific amount of time, in accordance with organizational or regulatory requirements. |
Microsoft 365 auditing tools allow administrators to set up audit log retention policies, ensuring that logs are kept for as long as required, and to create custom alerts for certain activities which may require immediate attention.
Electronic Discovery, or eDiscovery, is the process by which electronic data is sought, located, secured, and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a legal case. eDiscovery can also be employed for information management, privacy, and records management within an organization.
Microsoft 365’s eDiscovery solutions are comprehensive and designed to handle the full spectrum of eDiscovery needs, from holding and retaining content to searching and exporting the relevant data.
Key eDiscovery features within Microsoft 365 include:
Feature | Description |
---|---|
Content Search | A tool within the Microsoft 365 compliance center that allows an organization to search across mailboxes, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and more. |
eDiscovery Cases | Provides a collaborative workspace for legal teams to manage the entire eDiscovery process, from legal hold notifications to the eventual export of data. |
Hold Policies | Ensures that data (emails, documents, etc.) is preserved in its current state when it’s anticipated to be part of litigation—a process known as a “legal hold”. |
Advanced eDiscovery | Offers additional capabilities such as identifying and exporting relevant data, analyzing document patterns, and managing large datasets for reviews. |
With Advanced eDiscovery, organizations can leverage machine learning and text analytics to reduce the volumes of data that need to be reviewed manually, enhance the relevance of documents presented, and cut down on the overall costs and time spent on eDiscovery.
In practice, organizations may use auditing and eDiscovery together. For instance, audit logs might show that a user accessed certain sensitive documents without authorization, and those documents may later become part of an eDiscovery request due to litigation involving data breaches.
The integration of both auditing and eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 allows for a seamless experience when monitoring, searching, retaining, and analyzing data across the organization’s Office 365 ecosystem. It simplifies the management of compliance risks and legal issues, ensuring that companies can efficiently respond to requests and preserve necessary information without hindering productivity.
The primary purpose of auditing is to track and record user activities and system events, providing a traceable log, not to modify user data.
While eDiscovery is commonly used for legal investigations, it is also used for information governance, compliance, and record-keeping purposes.
Answer: A, B, D
Microsoft 365 auditing solutions record events like user login attempts, email forwarding rules, and file access/sharing activities, not text formatting changes in a document.
Answer: A, C
eDiscovery solutions in Microsoft 365 allow you to search for content across different services and preserve content when it’s placed on legal hold, but they do not automatically resolve legal disputes or analyze data patterns for unusual behavior (security and compliance tools would handle the latter).
While global administrators can manage audit logs, other roles, like compliance administrators and auditors, can also be assigned audit log permissions.
Microsoft 365 eDiscovery content search feature is designed to search across various platforms, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Teams.
Answer: B
By default, the retention period for audit logs in Microsoft 365 is 90 days.
Answer: B
Advanced eDiscovery features require an Office 365 or Microsoft 365 E5 subscription or an E5 Compliance add-on for other subscriptions.
You can use eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 to put a legal hold on a user’s OneDrive for Business account, as well as other data sources such as email and SharePoint sites.
Answer: C
Users with the appropriate permissions, such as compliance administrators, auditors, or global administrators, can access the audit log data in Microsoft
Auditing is enabled by default in SharePoint Online and Exchange Online; however, some specific actions may require additional configuration.
Answer: B
Content Search in the Microsoft 365 compliance center is the primary tool used for conducting eDiscovery searches across Microsoft 365 data.
eDiscovery is a feature in Microsoft 365 that helps organizations identify, collect, and produce relevant content for legal matters.
With eDiscovery in Microsoft 365, organizations can discover content in email, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams.
eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 works by creating a case, adding members to the case, and then using keywords, conditions, and filters to identify and export relevant content.
A preservation policy in eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 is a way to ensure that content is not deleted or modified while the eDiscovery process is ongoing.
eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 ensures privacy and security of discovered content by restricting access to case members, encrypting exported content, and providing audit logs of all activity.
Core eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 is a basic version that is available to all customers, while advanced eDiscovery is a more comprehensive version that provides additional features and capabilities.
The purpose of case management in eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 is to organize and manage the eDiscovery process by tracking progress, managing members, and setting retention policies.
A review set in eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 is a subset of content that has been identified as relevant and is ready for review by legal professionals.
The purpose of eDiscovery export in Microsoft 365 is to package and export relevant content in a format that is appropriate for legal review and analysis.
Yes, eDiscovery searches can be run across multiple Microsoft 365 tenants using the eDiscovery search tool in the Security and Compliance Center.
A query preview in eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 is a way to review search results before exporting content, in order to refine the search criteria and ensure that the results are relevant.
eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 integrates with Microsoft Teams by allowing organizations to search for relevant content in Teams channels and chats.
A deduplication policy in eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 is a way to remove duplicate content from search results in order to streamline the eDiscovery process.
Yes, eDiscovery searches can be performed across hybrid environments that include on-premises servers and Microsoft 365 services.
The purpose of legal hold in eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 is to ensure that content is not deleted or modified during the eDiscovery process, even if a preservation policy is not in place.
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