Microsoft Purview classifiers overview

Microsoft Purview classifiers help administrators identify sensitive content so they can protect and manage it. The Classifiers page brings classification types together in one experience where you can discover, create, inspect, and manage classifiers.

Search and filtering help you find classifiers. When you create a new classifier, you can view how each classifier type works. This helps you understand the available options and choose a classifier for your scenario.

The Classified items count shows how many items were found with that specific classification. You can also see how many policies use a classifier and inspect those dependencies before changing it.

In the Microsoft Purview portal, you can access Classifiers under Information Protection, Data Loss Prevention, or DSPM (Data Security Posture Management).

Classification types and capabilities

Important

The new Classifiers experience in Microsoft Purview is in preview and is available alongside the existing classification experiences. Classifiers you create, edit, or delete in either experience are reflected in the other. Features and functionality in the new experience might change before general availability.

Explore the following classification types and related capabilities.

Sensitive information types

Sensitive information types (SITs) identify content that matches patterns of sensitive information, such as social security, credit card, or bank account numbers. You can use preexisting sensitive information types or create your own.

For more information, see Learn about sensitive information types. For information about predefined types, see Sensitive information type entity definitions.

Named entities

Named entities are sensitive information types that use dictionaries and patterns to detect person names, physical addresses, and medical terms and conditions.

For more information, see Learn about named entities.

Exact data match

Exact data match identifies sensitive content by matching exact values.

For more information, see Learn about exact data match based sensitive information types.

Trainable classifiers

Microsoft Purview provides pretrained trainable classifiers that are ready to use. You can also create custom trainable classifiers by providing samples of the content you want to recognize.

For more information, see Learn about trainable classifiers.

Credentials

Credential sensitive information types detect credentials in content. The All credentials sensitive information type groups individual credential types to detect credentials from supported services and environments.

For more information, see All credential types.

Fingerprinting

Document fingerprinting recognizes content that is a variation of a template.

For more information, see Document fingerprinting.

Optical character recognition

Optical character recognition (OCR) lets Microsoft Purview scan images for sensitive information. You can enable OCR to extend classification to images without creating separate classifiers.

For setup requirements and supported locations, see Learn about optical character recognition.

On-demand classification

On-demand classification identifies and classifies sensitive content in files at rest, including files that haven't been classified or need updated classification.

For more information, see Create and analyze an on-demand classification scan.

Explore classified content

The Classifiers page helps you manage classifiers. Use Data Explorer to review items with classification matches and see where those items are located. Access to item lists and item contents requires the appropriate Data Explorer permissions.

You can find Data Explorer on the Microsoft Purview portal > Information Protection > Explorers page.

For supported content, access requirements, and instructions, see Get started with Data Explorer.

Permissions

Access to the Classifiers page can come from a Microsoft Entra administrator role or a Microsoft Purview role group.

Note

As a best practice, always use the role with least privilege to grant access to the Classifiers page.

Microsoft Entra administrator roles

The following Microsoft Entra roles provide access:

  • Global administrator
  • Compliance administrator
  • Security administrator
  • Compliance data administrator

Microsoft Purview roles and role groups

In Microsoft Purview, a role defines permissions, and a role group contains a set of roles. Adding a user to a role group grants the permissions of the roles in that group. For details, see Permissions in the Microsoft Purview portal.

Applicable Microsoft Purview roles

  • Information Protection Admin
  • Information Protection Analyst
  • Information Protection Investigator
  • Information Protection Reader

Applicable Microsoft Purview role groups

Use the following role groups to assign access. Their permissions differ; choose the group that matches the user's responsibilities. For assignment guidance, see Permissions in the Microsoft Purview portal.

  • Information Protection
  • Information Protection Admins
  • Information Protection Analysts
  • Information Protection Investigators
  • Information Protection Readers

Next steps

  • Last updated on