Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft's AI assistant family spanning free consumer Copilot (copilot.microsoft.com) and Microsoft 365 Copilot embedded in Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, and Windows.
Independent assessment across data handling, compliance, security and transparency.
Overview
Microsoft Copilot is both a consumer chat assistant at copilot.microsoft.com and an enterprise add-on (Microsoft 365 Copilot) that grounds responses in a tenant's Microsoft Graph — email, files, chats, meetings, and calendar — through Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneNote, and Windows. Microsoft 365 Copilot keeps prompts, responses, and grounding data inside the Microsoft 365 service boundary, under the customer's existing DPA, SOC 1/2, ISO 27001/27018, HIPAA BAA, and EU Data Boundary commitments, and does not train foundation models on tenant data. Consumer Copilot (free and Copilot Pro) runs on a personal Microsoft account and is outside those tenant guarantees.
Risk factors
3- Data sent to Microsoft servers for processing.
- User-generated content may be used for training.
- No clear opt-out for data training.
Recommendations
8- Before enabling M365 Copilot, run a SharePoint/OneDrive oversharing audit (SharePoint Advanced Management, Purview) and fix broad-scope permissions
- Enforce conditional access to block sign-in to consumer copilot.microsoft.com with personal Microsoft accounts on managed devices
- Apply Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels and DLP policies to control what Copilot can surface and what it can generate
- Use Restricted SharePoint Search / Restricted Content Discovery during rollout to limit Copilot's grounding scope to curated sites
- Disable web grounding (Bing) for regulated workflows or scope it via policy; review Copilot audit logs in Purview
- Govern Copilot Studio: require admin approval for connectors, restrict which users can publish agents, and monitor data flows
- For PHI, confirm the tenant is under a signed Microsoft BAA and that Copilot usage stays inside covered services
- Train users that only M365 Copilot inside their work account is tenant-protected; consumer Copilot is not
Data handling
- Storage
- Microsoft 365 Copilot processes prompts, responses, and grounding data inside the customer's Microsoft 365 service boundary, with EU Data Boundary support for EU tenants. Consumer Copilot runs in Microsoft's global consumer infrastructure.
- Retention
- M365 Copilot interactions are stored in the user's Exchange mailbox as hidden items and retained per the tenant's retention and eDiscovery policies. Consumer Copilot chat history is retained per the Microsoft Services Agreement and user-controlled activity settings.
- Training on inputs
- Microsoft 365 Copilot prompts, responses, and grounding data are not used to train foundation LLMs. Consumer Copilot prompts may be used to improve Microsoft services per the Microsoft Privacy Statement unless the user opts out.