Set Up Microsoft Purview DSPM for AI to Audit and Govern Copilot Interactions

To see and govern what users ask Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents, confirm that Microsoft Purview auditing is on, open DSPM for AI (classic) (or the new DSPM) in the Microsoft Purview portal, and activate the one-click policies from Recommendations. After a day, prompts and responses appear as AI interaction events in activity explorer for users with a content viewer role, and every interaction is searchable in the unified audit log as a CopilotInteraction record.

Who this is for and what you will have at the end

This guide is for compliance and security administrators who are rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot Studio agents and need visibility before, or soon after, licenses are assigned.

At the end you will have:

• Auditing confirmed and the right Purview roles assigned.
• The DSPM for AI one-click policies created for Copilot.
• The default data risk assessment reviewed and a custom one running.
• A repeatable way to read prompts and responses, and to query raw audit records with PowerShell.
• Retention and eDiscovery set up for Copilot interactions.

DSPM for AI (classic) and the new DSPM

Microsoft has converged DSPM for AI and DSPM into a single Data Security Posture Management solution. The classic version remains available under Solutions > DSPM for AI (classic), and most of its one-click policies are offered in the new version as remediation actions. New features are only added to the current version. The steps below use the classic navigation because it maps one-to-one to the documentation, and the table shows where each task lives in the new DSPM.

The new DSPM also adds Objectives, such as Prevent data exposure in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot interactions, which bundle the same policies into a guided workflow.

Prerequisites

Roles

Use the least privileged role that works. If you use administrative units, only an unrestricted administrator can create the one-click policies that apply to all users.

Licensing and data sources

• Users must have Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses for their Copilot and agent interactions to be monitored.
• Copilot in Fabric and Security Copilot need the enterprise version of Microsoft Purview data governance and a collection policy.
• Third-party AI sites need devices onboarded to Purview and the Purview browser extension; AI apps other than Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Facilitator need pay-as-you-go billing.

Step 1: Confirm that auditing is on

Run this in Exchange Online PowerShell. Don't use Security & Compliance PowerShell for this check, because there the property always returns False.

Connect-ExchangeOnline -UserPrincipalName admin@contoso.com
 
Get-AdminAuditLogConfig | Format-List UnifiedAuditLogIngestionEnabled
 
# Only if the value is False
Set-AdminAuditLogConfig -UnifiedAuditLogIngestionEnabled $true

Turning it on can take up to 60 minutes to take effect, and events can take several hours to become searchable. You can also select the Audit solution in the Purview portal and choose the Start recording user and admin activity banner if it appears.

Step 2: Open DSPM for AI and complete Get started

1. Sign in to the Microsoft Purview portal and go to Solutions > DSPM for AI (classic).
2. On Overview, keep the All AI apps view and review the Get started section. The actions are Turn on Microsoft Purview Audit, Install Microsoft Purview browser extension, Onboard devices to Microsoft Purview and Extend your insights for data discovery.
3. Complete the audit action at minimum. The browser extension and device onboarding only matter if you also want visibility into third-party AI sites.
4. Switch the view from All AI apps to Microsoft 365 Copilot and work through Assess and prevent oversharing of sensitive data, Secure your data in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Discover Microsoft 365 Copilot activity.

Step 3: Activate the one-click policies for Copilot

Select Recommendations and open these Copilot-specific items. Each creates a policy in the owning Purview solution, which you can edit or scope later.

For Copilot in Fabric and Security Copilot, Secure interactions for Microsoft Copilot experiences creates the collection policy DSPM for AI - Capture interactions for Copilot experiences, which captures prompts and responses that would otherwise only produce audit events.

The label-based DLP policy is the same control described in excluding labeled files from Copilot with sensitivity labels; choose the labels carefully, because Copilot won't use the content of matching items.

Policies that use Adaptive Protection turn that capability on with default risk levels if it isn't already enabled. If you delete a one-click policy, it shows PendingDeletion on the Policies page until removal completes.

Step 4: Review data risk assessments

A default data risk assessment runs weekly, without activation, for the top 100 SharePoint sites by usage. The first time, results take four days to appear.

1. Select Data risk assessments, then View details on the default assessment.
2. Select a site to open its flyout with Overview, Identify, Protect and Monitor tabs.
3. On Protect, choose a remediation: Restrict access by label (a Copilot DLP policy), Restrict all items (SharePoint Restricted Content Discovery), Create an auto-labeling policy, or Create retention policies for content not accessed in at least three years.
4. On Monitor, review sharing counts and use Start a SharePoint site access review for owners.

To scan specific sites or users, select Create custom assessment. Results take at least 48 hours and don't refresh; duplicate the assessment to rerun it, including after the 30-day expiration. Limits for Microsoft 365: up to 200,000 items per location, and counts might be inaccurate above 100,000 files per location. Item-level scanning, which needs an Entra app registration with Microsoft Graph application permissions, supports up to 10 SharePoint sites and doesn't support OneDrive.

Step 5: Read prompts and responses in activity explorer

After at least a day, open Reports and select Copilot experiences & agents to see total interactions, sensitive interactions per app and the top sensitivity labels referenced. Then select Activity explorer and filter AI app category to Copilot experiences & agents.

Use the Web queries filter to find interactions where Copilot used web search. Select Apps and agents to see which agents are in use and what sensitive data they accessed.

Step 6: Query Copilot audit records with PowerShell

The audit log captures each interaction under the record type CopilotInteraction, without prompt or response text. Each record includes properties such as AppHost (for example BizChat, Word or Teams), AppIdentity, AgentId and AgentName for agents, and AccessedResources, which lists the files, emails and sites Copilot read along with each item's SensitivityLabelId and any PolicyDetails when a policy restricted access.

Connect-ExchangeOnline -UserPrincipalName admin@contoso.com
 
$records = Search-UnifiedAuditLog -StartDate (Get-Date).AddDays(-7) -EndDate (Get-Date) `
  -RecordType CopilotInteraction -ResultSize 5000
 
$records | Select-Object CreationDate, UserIds, Operations | Format-Table
 
# Inspect the full JSON of one record
$records | Select-Object -First 1 -ExpandProperty AuditData

-ResultSize has a maximum of 5,000. For larger exports, use -SessionCommand ReturnLargeSet with a -SessionId, which can return up to 50,000 unsorted results. In the portal, use Audit and the Activities - operation names field. To check whether Copilot used the public web, look for BingWebSearch in the AISystemPlugin details. Interactions with Copilot Studio agents also appear as CopilotInteraction, with an AppIdentity that begins with Copilot.Studio..

Treat audit data as a security and compliance source, not as usage reporting. For adoption metrics, use the Microsoft 365 Copilot usage report or the Copilot Dashboard in Viva Insights.

Step 7: Retain and search interactions

• Retention: In Data Lifecycle Management, create a retention policy and select Microsoft Copilot Experiences. To keep the exact version of files referenced in Copilot, auto-apply a retention label with Apply label to cloud attachments and links shared in Exchange, Teams, Viva Engage, and Copilot.
• eDiscovery: Prompts and responses are stored in the user's mailbox. In a case, search with Add condition > Type > Contains any of > Copilot activity, or use the ItemClass property with the value IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.*.

Verify the setup

1. In Policies, confirm each one-click policy shows as created and is in the expected mode.
2. Ask a pilot user to run a few Copilot prompts, including one that references a labeled file.
3. The next day, confirm an AI interaction event appears in activity explorer and that a content viewer can read the text.
4. Run the PowerShell search and confirm CopilotInteraction records exist for the pilot user, with AccessedResources populated.
5. Check Reports for the label in Top sensitivity labels references in Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents.

Troubleshooting

Closing checklist

• Auditing verified in Exchange Online PowerShell.
• DSPM roles assigned with least privilege, including a separate content viewer role for the few people who should read prompts.
• One-click Copilot policies created and reviewed in their owning solutions.
• Default and custom data risk assessments reviewed, with remediation assigned to site owners.
• Weekly review of activity explorer, plus a saved PowerShell audit query.
• Retention policy for Microsoft Copilot Experiences in place.
• External content brought into Copilot through Copilot connectors and agents built in Copilot Studio governed with data policies and an environment strategy.

References

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/dspm-for-ai
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/dspm-for-ai-considerations
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ai-microsoft-purview-permissions
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/data-security-posture-management-learn-about
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/dspm-task-mapping
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ai-m365-copilot
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ai-m365-copilot-considerations
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/audit-copilot
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/audit-log-enable-disable
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchangepowershell/search-unifiedauditlog