Use a documented control plan with named owners. No single SharePoint setting establishes compliance on its own.
Translate obligations into controls
Work with the people responsible for your organization’s obligations to identify the information in scope, required handling, and evidence needed. Avoid assuming that a generic retention period applies to every record.
Create a control register that names the requirement, responsible owner, configuration, and review cadence. This makes gaps visible before an audit or incident.
Review access and sharing
Establish who owns each sensitive workspace and who approves membership changes. Review external collaboration and remove access that no longer has a business purpose.
Treat encryption as one layer of the program. It does not resolve an overly broad membership group or a business process that sends sensitive information to the wrong recipient.
Separate retention from sensitivity
Sensitivity labels address classification and protection; retention policies and labels address how long content is retained or when it is deleted. Design each around its own requirement.
Test lifecycle behavior with the responsible records team before broad deployment. A retention decision should be based on the applicable requirement and approved schedule.
Maintain evidence and readiness
Keep records of access reviews, policy decisions, exception approvals, and validation results. Assign someone to review unresolved actions and set deadlines.
Walk through a realistic incident scenario with the business owner and response team. Confirm who investigates, who makes containment decisions, and how evidence is preserved.
Further reading
Validate configuration choices against Microsoft’s current documentation and your tenant’s available licenses.
Microsoft: Retention policies and retention labels ↗Microsoft: Data encryption in OneDrive and SharePoint ↗Microsoft: Sensitivity labels for SharePoint and OneDrive files ↗