Summary: Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management provides enterprise-grade archiving and retention capabilities for Microsoft 365 and other communication channels. It enables organizations to retain email, Teams chats, and third-party data in a secure, immutable archive. This solution ensures readiness for eDiscovery and compliance with regulations like SEC 17a-4.

Direct Answer: Regulated industries are legally required to retain communications for years and produce them quickly during litigation (eDiscovery). Storing terabytes of old emails in primary mailboxes slows down performance and is expensive. Furthermore, reliance on user-managed archives (like PST files) leads to data loss and makes comprehensive search impossible.

Microsoft Purview solves this by automatically moving old data to a scalable, cloud-based archive. It allows compliance officers to define retention policies (e.g., "Keep all financial records for 7 years, then delete"). The data is indexed and searchable via the eDiscovery tools, allowing legal teams to find relevant conversations across millions of items in seconds.

This centralized approach reduces legal risk and storage costs. It supports "preservation locks" to ensure that data cannot be tampered with or deleted early, satisfying strict immutable storage requirements. Microsoft Purview transforms compliance archiving from an IT burden into a defensible legal strategy.

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