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Test sensitive information types

At any time during the life of a sensitive information type (SIT), you can test how it performs. This article explains how to do that in the Microsoft Purview portal.

Before you begin

Important

Microsoft Customer Service & Support can't assist with creating custom classifications or regular expression patterns. Support engineers can provide limited support for the feature, such as, providing sample regular expression patterns for simulation purposes, or helping to troubleshoot an existing regular expression pattern that's not triggering as expected. However, they can't provide assurances that any custom content-matching development fulfills your requirements or obligations.

Permissions and role groups

The account you use to perform tests of SITs must be assigned one of these roles in the Microsoft Purview and one of these roles or role groups in Exchange.

Role groups assignments in the Microsoft Purview portal

The account you use must be assigned one of these role groups in the Microsoft Purview portal:

  • Compliance Administrator
  • Compliance Data Administrator
  • Security Administrator
  • Communication Compliance Admins
  • Information Protection Admins
  • Information Protection Investigators
  • Organization Management

To assign a user to a role group in the Microsoft Purview portal, follow the steps in Add users or groups to a Microsoft Purview built-in role group.

Microsoft Entra Roles in Exchange Online

These can be assigned either in the Exchange Admin center or in Microsoft Entra.

  • Communication Compliance Admin
  • Communication Compliance Investigation
  • Compliance Admin
  • Data Loss Prevention
  • Information Protection Admin
  • Information Protection Investigator
  • Information Protection Reader
  • Insider Risk Management Admin
  • Insider Risk Management Investigation
  • Privacy Management Admin
  • Privacy Management Investigation
  • Security Admin

Microsoft Entra Role Groups in Exchange Online

  • Communication Compliance
  • Communication Compliance Administrators
  • Compliance Administrator
  • Organization Management
  • Compliance Management
  • Information Protection
  • Information Protection Admins
  • Information Protection Investigators
  • Information Protection Readers
  • Insider Risk Management
  • Insider Risk Management Admins
  • Insider Risk Management Investigators
  • Privacy Management
  • Privacy Management Administrators
  • Privacy Management Investigators
  • Security Administrator

Enable access to simulation mode

Applies to these role groups:

  • Communication Compliance Admins
  • Information Protection Admins
  • Information Protection Investigators
  • Organization Management

Test the effects of a sensitive information type

You can test the effects of any sensitive information type in the list. We suggest that you run a simulation for each sensitive information type that you create before using it in a policy.

Note

This procedure is only supported for unencrypted files.

  1. Prepare two files, for example, two Word documents. One should have content that matches the elements you specified in your sensitive information type. The other should have content that doesn't match.
  2. Sign in to the Microsoft Purview portal > Information Protection > Classifiers > Sensitive info types and choose the sensitive information type from the list to open the details pane. Choose Test.
  3. Upload a file and choose Test. (You can only upload and run a simulation for one file at a time.)
  4. On the Match results page, review the results and choose Finish.
  5. Perform the same steps for the second file.