What are sensitivity labels?
Sensitivity labels in Microsoft 365 are a tool for classifying and protecting data based on its sensitivity level.
Table of contents
Sensitivity labels are an often underused tool that can help you safeguard information by applying security and access controls to documents, emails, and other content without disrupting your users’ workflows.
You can customize sensitivity labels to meet your organization’s specific compliance, security, and governance requirements. For example, you can create multiple “custom levels” such as: Personal, Public, General, Internal, External, Confidential, and Highly Confidential.
Key features of sensitivity labels in Microsoft 365
- Classification: As mentioned, you can tag content with labels such as “Confidential,” “Internal,” or “Public,”. This makes it clear how the information in question should be handled.
- Encryption: Protects sensitive files and emails by automatically applying encryption to restrict access to authorized users only.
- Access restrictions: With sensitivity labels you can controls actions like copying, printing, or forwarding sensitive information based on the applied label.
- Automatic labeling: Uses predefined conditions to apply sensitivity labels automatically, such as detecting credit card numbers or personal identifiers.
- Integration with Microsoft services: Works seamlessly across Microsoft 365 apps, including Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive.
Examples of sensitivity labels in action
There are a lot of ways you can use Microsoft sensitivity labels to help you increase the overall security of your Microsoft 365 environment. Here are just a few of them:
- Email protection: Automatically apply a “Confidential” label to emails containing sensitive customer data, restricting them from being forwarded to external recipients.
- Document classification: You can encrypt business-critical documents and limit access to a specific team by applying a “Highly Confidential” label.
- Teams conversations: Use sensitivity labels to classify Teams as “Public” or “Private,” controlling external sharing and guest access.
Benefits of sensitivity labels
The benefits of using sensitivity labels are multifold and clear:
- Enhanced data security: Sensitivity labels protect sensitive content even when the document is shared outside the organization.
- Compliance support: Sensitivity labels are a vital cornerstone in helping you meet data protection standards like GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO 27001 by controlling and tracking how sensitive data is being used.
- User empowerment: They can educate users about the importance of data protection by giving them the control to classify content themselves with clear, predefined labels.