The most appropriate operational response is a structured, risk-based approach. DLP alerts in Microsoft Purview serve as the initial detection point. The SOC should review these alerts to triage them, assess their severity, and understand the context. For high-risk or complex cases that require broader correlation with other security signals (like endpoint behavior from Defender or identity logs), escalating the incident to a centralized SIEM/XDR platform like Microsoft Sentinel or Defender XDR is the standard best practice for a comprehensive investigation.

A. Disable all DLP alerts: This is negligent, as it ignores the security risk and the organization's responsibility to protect sensitive data.

B. Treat every DLP alert as a confirmed incident: This is an overreaction that would lead to excessive business disruption and alert fatigue, as many DLP alerts are false positives or low-risk events.

C. Configure alerts only for Copilot prompts: This creates a significant security gap by ignoring the actual exfiltration actions (e.g., copy, print) that often follow data exposure.

1. Microsoft Learn. (2024). Overview of data loss prevention. Section: "DLP policy alerts and reports". Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/dlp-overview

2. Microsoft Learn. (2024). Get started with data loss prevention alerts. Section: "Investigate an alert". Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/dlp-alerts-dashboard-get-started

3. Microsoft Learn. (2024). Microsoft Purview data security and compliance protections for Microsoft Copilot. Section: "Data Loss Prevention (DLP)". Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ai-microsoft-purview

4. Microsoft Learn. (2024). Investigate data loss prevention alerts with Microsoft Defender XDR. Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defender/investigate-dlp-alerts-in-defender