How Microsoft Purview DLP currently can help you protect confidential data in Copilot.

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Organizations today face a difficult balancing act. Business leaders are eager to adopt tools like Microsoft Copilot to unlock productivity and innovation. Meanwhile, IT and security teams are concerned about safeguarding sensitive information, especially as AI-driven features process vast amounts of organizational data. This tension is real: enabling advanced capabilities without compromising compliance or data protection is a challenge every modern enterprise must solve. Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a key solution to this problem. It provides mechanisms to prevent confidential data from being exposed or misused, even in scenarios involving AI. I want to highlight two features designed to help organizations in controlling what is being processed by Copilot. Blocking Documents Based on Sensitivity Labels One of the foundational features of Purview DLP is its ability to enforce policies based on Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels. If your organization...

Saving space with differencing disks?

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I just read, and followed this article on differencing disks: http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/articles/UseVirtualPCsDifferencingDisksToYourAdvantage.aspx

It was really helpful for a first timer like me. In my daily work I have to access different customers’ remotely, and they all have different ways of logging on and different security requirements. To help me with this, I have set up a couple of virtual pc's. The only problem so far, has been the lack of space on my hard drive. But thanks to this article, I have saved a lot of space. I now only have 1 core disk with the operating system and basic functions. Then I have one VM, and diff-vhd for each customer.

In addition to the tips this guy have, there are a few things I want add to "what to do to the base".
If you're really keen on saving space, I would run cleanmgr on the disk first of all. Then I would look for hidden files and folder containing uninstall information on service packs and patches (Let's face it, if you're creating a static core, you're probably not going to uninstall these patches). After cleaning up, go through basic settings you like to set to your image. From the top of my head:
• Remove all visual effects you don't need
• Stop services you probably don't need (don't worry, you can enable them later, if needed)
• Start a few programs, and set your "standard settings"*
Then continue with the final preparations described in the article (and don't forget to sysprep if you want different SIDs in your environment.

(* One good example is Internet explorer. I always set my preferred homepage, usually blank, adjust some settings in advanced settings, set a preferred search engine and so forth. Since I "always" do it, it only makes sense to set it once, in the core)