Session Abstract

Microsoft Ignite 2025 made it clear that AI is no longer a side feature—it’s embedded across the workday, with Copilot experiences and agents operating inside business processes. That shift introduces a new governance requirement: AI conversations are business records. If your organization can retain and delete email and documents, but not Copilot prompts and responses, you’re missing a rapidly growing category of compliance-relevant content. In this session, we explore how Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) applies retention and deletion strategies to AI interactions—covering user prompts and AI responses—to support legal, regulatory, and internal policy obligations. You’ll learn how Microsoft’s retention model for Copilot & AI apps works at a high level, including how retained AI interaction data is stored behind the scenes. We’ll also unpack the practical impact of newer retention capabilities that provide separate retention policy locations for Copilot experiences enabling clearer policy boundaries and easier compliance storytelling. Attendees will leave with a concise architectural approach for “AI-ready retention”: how to define what to keep, what to delete, how to scope policies to AI interaction locations, and how to explain the end-to-end audit model to security, legal, and business stakeholders.

Albert Hoitingh

My name is Albert Hoitingh and I'm from The Hague in The Netherlands. I love working in IT and have been doing so for quite some time. From on-premises environments, including Lotus Notes and SharePoint Server, via BPOS to Microsoft 365 - I've worked with them all. Right now, I'm a Technical Architect for the Microsoft Innovation Hub. I've been a Microsoft MVP for Microsoft 365 and Security for more than eight years and (international) speaker on Microsoft 365, compliance, security and risk. I love to have discussions on compliance, security and risk in the cloud security officers, business users, architects and management. Besides my work and (former) MVP endeavors, I love to ride my bike and be with my family. I also love to read, delve into history, and much more. I also blog at https://alberthoitingh.com.