Complete Guide: Setting Up Microsoft Purview (Compliance Center) for SMB clients

Microsoft Purview, previously known as Microsoft Compliance Center, is the unified platform for managing data governance, regulatory compliance, and risk mitigation inside Microsoft 365 tenants. While it’s often associated with complex enterprise requirements, Purview features are just as valuable for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Properly setting up Microsoft Purview helps IT administrators, MSPs, and SMB owners leverage its full potential for audit logging, data loss prevention, insider risk management, and retention policies — all with simplified management tools.

What is MS Purview?

Microsoft Purview is an IT compliance and data governance platform built into Microsoft 365, designed to help organizations manage regulatory requirements and reduce operational risk. By consolidating tools for risk management under a single dashboard, Purview makes it easy for businesses (large or small) to streamline their compliance efforts and maintain full visibility over their data across the Microsoft cloud ecosystem.

What is Microsoft Purview used for?

For small and medium-sized businesses, Microsoft Purview offers many benefits:

• With Purview, SMB clients can enforce essential data privacy regulations such as PCI and HIPAA by putting clear controls in place for who can access and manage sensitive data.
• The platform makes it easy to control data retention and classification, ensuring information is stored only as long as legally required and is properly labeled throughout its lifecycle.
• Purview also allows administrators to monitor and respond to risky user activities, helping prevent potential data leaks or unauthorized actions before they escalate.
• Its robust auditing and reporting capabilities also simplify regulatory compliance, making it easier for SMBs to prepare for and pass regulatory reviews or respond quickly to audit requests.

Prerequisites for configuring Microsoft Purview

Before starting Microsoft Purview setup in an SMB environment, ensure you have the appropriate access and assets in place:

• Licensing: Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3, or E5 (for full Purview access)
• Roles: You must have Global Administrator, Compliance Administrator, or Security Administrator rights.
• Device requirements: Endpoints should be Azure AD-joined or hybrid-joined.
• Portal access: https://compliance.microsoft.com
• PowerShell modules: Install ExchangeOnlineManagement, Compliance, and Microsoft Graph for automation tasks.

Enable and access Microsoft Purview for the tenant

1. Sign in to Microsoft Purview Compliance Portal with a global admin account.
2. Verify that audit logging is enabled:
   1. Go to Audit → Audit Search
   2. If prompted, click Start recording user and admin activity
3. Review which Microsoft Purview solutions are enabled from the solutions catalog.
4. Confirm Microsoft 365 Licensing in Settings → Microsoft 365 Licensing to ensure the necessary feature availability for DLP, retention, and more.

Enable audit logging via PowerShell

Easily automate audit logging with PowerShell — critical for email, file, and admin-activity tracking.

Steps:

1. Connect to the Compliance Center:

Connect-IPPSSession

2. Enable unified audit logging:

Set-AdminAuditLogConfig -UnifiedAuditLogIngestionEnabled $true

3. Check audit logging status:

Get-AdminAuditLogConfig | Format-List UnifiedAuditLogIngestionEnabled

4. Enable mailbox auditing:

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Set-Mailbox -AuditEnabled $true

These commands ensure a compliant audit trail for both user actions and vital business data.

Configure Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies

Protect sensitive information by configuring DLP policies:

1. Navigate to Microsoft Purview → Data loss prevention → Policies.
2. Click Create policy.
3. Select a template: (e.g., Financial, Medical, or Custom).
4. Choose the locations to apply policy: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams Chat (if enabled)
5. Set detection conditions for PII, credit card, HIPAA, etc.
6. Define actions: Block, encrypt, or alert on sensitive data matches.
7. Add user/admin notifications as appropriate.
8. Save and monitor ongoing results from the Policy Matches and Alerts dashboards.

Apply retention labels and policies

Retention policies help manage storage, compliance, and defensible deletion:

1. Go to Data lifecycle management → Microsoft 365 → Retention policies.
2. Create a new policy (e.g., “SMB Client Email Retention”.
3. Set a retention period (e.g., 7 years or as dictated by client contracts).
4. Target Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive locations.
5. Choose Publish to all users or selected groups.
6. Use label policies for manual tagging if needed.

Use Registry to support endpoint compliance Features

Extend compliance controls to Windows endpoints:

Enable diagnostic data submission:

• Set AllowTelemetry (DWORD) to 2 at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection

Enable Office telemetry for compliance insights:

• Set DisableTelemetry (DWORD) to 0 at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Telemetry

These registry settings support endpoint visibility for reporting on file movements or anomalous activity.

Configure GPO settings for Purview support

Standardize and automate compliance at scale using Group Policy:

• Path:

Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Data Collection and Preview Builds

• Enable Allow Telemetry = Basic or Enhanced.
• Enable Configure commercial ID for Endpoint Analytics integration.
• Enable Turn on Windows Defender Antivirus and cloud-delivered protection.

These policies help ensure endpoint-generated compliance and security data feeds into Purview and Microsoft Defender.

Use Command Prompt for policy and connectivity checks

Validate the setup and operational status:

• Test Purview portal connectivity:

nslookup compliance.microsoft.com

ping compliance.microsoft.com

• Verify device Azure AD join:

dsregcmd /status

• Check audit policy enforcement:

auditpol /get /category:*

These tools confirm that endpoints feed audit and security events as required.

Additional considerations

SMB policy templates

Start by creating policy templates tailored to common SMB compliance frameworks such as HIPAA, GDPR, or PCI. By pre-configuring Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and retention policies for these regulations, you can accelerate deployment for new clients or business units and ensure that all sensitive information is properly classified and protected from day one.

User onboarding

For smoother user onboarding, automate the process of sending DLP or risk policy notifications when new mailboxes are created. This keeps staff informed about data handling responsibilities and helps reinforce your organization’s compliance culture from the start.

Reporting

Leverage the Microsoft Purview compliance score to regularly assess your client’s or tenant’s risk posture. The compliance score provides actionable insights into areas of strength and weakness, guiding you toward continuous improvement and more informed decision-making about security and policy adjustments.

Integration

Extend your visibility and protection across the entire cloud environment by integrating Purview with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. This integration gives you deeper monitoring and control over SaaS applications, making it easier to detect and respond to anomalous activity, shadow IT, and potential data exposures outside the core Microsoft 365 suite.

Troubleshooting

Audit logs missing:

If you encounter missing audit logs, first verify that unified audit logging is enabled in Microsoft Purview, as this feature is essential for capturing and retaining user and admin activity. Remember that it can take 24 to 48 hours for new log data to begin populating in the portal after activation, so plan for this delay when validating setup.

DLP not firing:

If a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy doesn’t appear to activate or block sensitive data as expected, double-check that the policy rules accurately reflect the actual types of data and the specific Microsoft 365 locations where protection is needed. Fine-tune keywords, conditions, and scopes to ensure your policies are both precise and effective.

Access denied: 

In cases where access is denied to certain Purview features or actions, review your user’s assigned roles and permissions in Microsoft 365. Only users with compliance-specific roles — such as Global Administrator, Compliance Administrator, or Security Administrator — will be able to manage advanced Purview settings.

Purview portal unreachable:

If the Purview portal is unreachable, investigate the network’s DNS configuration and firewall rules. Ensure that endpoints required by Microsoft 365, such as compliance.microsoft.com, are allowed and not blocked by perimeter defenses; this will restore access to essential compliance tools and dashboards.

NinjaOne services

NinjaOne makes scalable Microsoft Purview deployment easy for SMBs and MSPs by:

• Automating scripts for registry edits and policy enforcement across all managed endpoints
• Centrally monitoring DLP incidents, audit status, and system configurations
• Sending targeted alerts if endpoint telemetry is disabled or Purview is misconfigured
• Integrating compliance/risk events with ticketing and incident response workflows
• Delivering cross-tenant compliance dashboards for comprehensive reporting

With NinjaOne, enforcing and monitoring Purview compliance controls is operationalized — even in SMB environments with lean IT teams.

In summary

Deploying Microsoft Purview empowers SMBs to automate, scale, and simplify compliance across Microsoft 365 — without needing enterprise infrastructure. By following these steps for audit logging, DLP/retention policy setup, endpoint enforcement via Registry and GPO, and leveraging automation, MSPs and internal IT teams can proactively manage risk, prove compliance, and meet client requirements efficiently. With Purview and NinjaOne in your toolkit, strong data governance becomes practical and achievable for every organization.