Microsoft Purview Sensitivity Labels: Sensitivity label grouping modernization coming this fall (?)

There is a change coming to Microsoft Purview Information Protection that simplifies sensitivity label architecture. The goal is to make label management easier, more scalable, and less rigid for organizations. The new model will only include standalone labels and sublabels. Parent labels will be replaced by label groups, which act as organizational containers. These groups cannot be applied to content and have no actions or scope, but they retain color and priority for visual organization. Hopefully, this change will make it much easier to move labels around and make other changes in production: for example, converting a standalone label into a sublabel or moving sublabels between groups without breaking dependencies.  From my experience, this update solves one of the biggest challenges in large environments: rigid label hierarchies. The new dynamic model gives admins the agility they need to adapt quickly as compliance and business needs evolve. For admins, migration will be quic...

Prepare for: Multiple account access to Copilot in Microsoft 365

There is a new (As of January 30, 2025) policy setting is available in Cloud Policy, which will enable multiple account access to Copilot in Microsoft 365 desktop and mobile apps, allowing users to utilize Copilot across different signed-in accounts. 

The feature itself will allow a user to use a fully licensed Copilot feature from one tenant on "any" document available to them in a tenant they have access to. No matter if the user has Copilot in any of the other tenants. The feature will be rolled out globally from early March 2025 and is expected to be completed by late March 2025, but organizations might want to look into this policy and understand how it may or may not impact their existing security policies.

I recommend reading up on the following article, where details about what the user can access in different scenarios are described.

Here are some of the things to take into consideration: 

  • Copilot's data protection is based on the identity used to access the file, ensuring enterprise data protection regardless of the account used. 
  • The setting for web grounding in Copilot is also identity-based. If web grounding is disabled for a particular identity, it will remain disabled even when accessing Copilot from another account.
  • If a user is accessing a document in a different tenant, work grounded data from the home tenant will NOT be available
  • The feature will be available in most of the major apps. 
For organizations considering to restrict this behaviour, Microsoft has provided the following Learn Article.