Hello and welcome to Microsoft Purview Information Barriers. In this lesson, we’ll take a look at what information barriers are and why you use them.

Microsoft 365 facilitates collaboration among different groups and organizations. However, it also offers ways to restrict communication and collaboration among certain groups if needed. For example, you might need to restrict communication and collaboration between different groups within the organization in order to prevent a conflict of interest. You might also want to restrict communication and collaboration between specific people within the organization in order to protect certain internal information.

The tool that facilitates these restrictions is called Microsoft Purview Information Barriers. This tool works with Microsoft Teams, with SharePoint Online, and with OneDrive for Business. As a Compliance Administrator or Information Barriers Administrator, you can create policies that can allow or restrict communications between groups of users in Microsoft Teams. 

A real-world example of where you could leverage Information barrier policies would be a scenario where you have people in the Finance department that are working on a confidential project. If you want to prevent them from communicating with, or sharing files with, certain groups within the organization, you could define Information barrier policies to enforce this restriction.

By leveraging such information barrier policies, organizations can not only avoid possible conflicts of interest, but they can also maintain compliance with industry standards or industry regulations that they must adhere to.

In the upcoming lecture, I’ll walk you through the 6 steps of configuring information barrier policies.