Building data loss prevention (DLP) policies from scratch can feel daunting. Fortunately, most DLP platforms, including Microsoft Purview in Microsoft 365, include ready-made templates for common regulations and data types. Templates give you a strong starting point, but they work best when you understand what each one does and adjust it to your business.
Here are the most common DLP policy templates and how organizations typically use them.
Financial Data Templates
U.S. Financial Data
Detects credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and ABA routing numbers. Useful for any business that processes payments, handles payroll, or stores customer banking details. A common rule: warn or block when these items are sent to external recipients without encryption.
PCI DSS
Focused on payment card data to support PCI DSS compliance. Retailers, restaurants, healthcare billing departments, and service companies that accept cards often start here.
GLBA
Designed around the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act for financial institutions. It detects customer financial information and personal identifiers that banks, credit unions, lenders, and advisers must protect.
Privacy And Personal Information Templates
U.S. Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
Detects data such as Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, and taxpayer IDs. Nearly every business holds this information in HR files, applications, or customer records.
State Privacy And Breach Notification Laws
Templates aligned to state laws focus on the personal data types that trigger breach notification. They help businesses that serve customers in multiple states.
GDPR
For organizations with European customers or employees, GDPR templates detect EU personal data such as national identification numbers and passport details.
Healthcare Templates
HIPAA
Combines detection of personal identifiers with medical terms and identifiers to find protected health information. Healthcare providers, business associates, benefits administrators, and insurance agencies commonly use it to prevent PHI from being emailed or shared insecurely.
Intellectual Property And Custom Templates
Built-in templates do not know what your trade secrets look like. Many organizations add custom policies based on:
- Sensitivity labels applied to confidential documents
- Keywords such as project code names or client names
- Document fingerprints of standard forms, such as contracts or engineering templates
- File types like CAD drawings or source code
How To Use Templates Effectively
Start With Your Real Obligations
Choose templates based on the regulations and contracts that actually apply to you. A medical practice needs HIPAA and PII. A wealth management firm needs GLBA, financial data, and PII. Turning on every template creates noise.
Run In Test Mode First
Deploy templates in simulation or audit mode for a few weeks. Review matches to see how often they trigger and whether matches are accurate.
Adjust Thresholds
Templates often include thresholds, such as triggering only when a message contains a certain number of sensitive items. Tuning these reduces false positives. For example, one credit card number in an email might generate a warning, while ten might be blocked.
Set Appropriate Actions
Decide whether each policy should audit, notify the user, require justification, encrypt automatically, or block. Automatic encryption is often a good middle ground for email.
Extend Across Locations
Apply templates to email, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and endpoints so the same data is protected wherever it moves.
Templates Are A Starting Point
Templates save time, but they are not a complete DLP program. Combine them with data classification, access controls, employee training, and regular review of alerts. Revisit policies whenever regulations, systems, or business processes change.
CTS Companies helps Michigan businesses select, configure, and tune DLP policies through our data loss prevention services, and keeps them aligned with your compliance requirements through managed compliance services. Talk to an expert to get started.