MC1249429 - Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Data Security Investigations introduces new soft purge mitigation action

Updated April 6, 2026: We have updated the timeline. Thank you for your patience.

Introduction

We’re adding a new soft purge mitigation action in Data Security Investigations (DSI) to help administrators quickly remove sensitive or overshared items during an investigation. Soft purge allows items to be deleted while remaining recoverable until their deleted item retention period expires. This addition builds on DSI’s AI-powered content analysis capabilities—such as categorization, AI search, and risk examination—to help organizations identify and respond to data security risks more efficiently.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 558109.

When this will happen

General Availability (Worldwide): Rollout began in early April 2026 and completed early April 2026.

How this affects your organization

Who is affected

Admins using Data Security Investigations (DSI) in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal

What will happen:

A new soft purge mitigation action will be available in DSI:
Admins can use soft purge to remove items that match an investigation query while still preserving the ability to recover those items until their retention period expires.
The feature is enabled by default and requires no configuration.
Existing Data Loss Prevention (DLP), labeling, and retention policies continue to apply; no policy changes are required.
This feature does not affect user workflows.
This capability appears automatically for eligible tenants when the rollout completes.

What you can do to prepare

No action is required before rollout.

To prepare, you may want to:

Review how soft purge works in DSI.
Update internal documentation for investigation processes, if applicable.
Inform security teams or admins who use DSI about the new action.

Learn more:

Compliance considerations

No compliance considerations identified. Review as appropriate for your organization.