Legal Hold. Records Policy. Governed Action.
Smart Stack 3.0 turns legal, records, and compliance policy into governed action on enterprise information. One operating environment to understand what exists, apply the obligation, execute the approved decision, and prove what happened.
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Policy Becomes An Operating Capability
Most organizations hold clear obligations and unclear data. Smart Stack 3.0 closes that distance with four connected capabilities.
See the Complete Data State
Understand what information exists, where it resides, who owns it, what it contains, and which obligations apply.
Translate Policy into Data-Level Decisions
Convert legal, retention, compliance, and business requirements into searchable tags and governed collections.
Execute Approved Actions
Place legal hold, preserve, delete, copy, move, archive, re-tier, or retain an authoritative copy.
Prove What Happened
Maintain the policy criteria, approvals, affected files, exceptions, actions, and outcomes required for defensibility.
Two Paths To Enforcement
Legal hold and records policy are enforced through the Trusted Data Archive, the Trusted Data Refinery, or both operating together.
Trusted Data Archive
Place and enforce legal hold directly within the Archive. Preserve governed content, apply retention, search and collect information, and maintain a complete audit trail.
Place and enforce legal holds
Preserve governed content
Apply retention controls
Search and collect information
Maintain an auditable chain of action
Trusted Data Refinery
Govern enterprise information where it currently resides. Classify and tag content, recognize legal-hold obligations, create governed review collections, and execute approved actions.
Analyze content and metadata in place
Recognize existing legal-hold signals
Apply policy-aware tags
Build governed collections
Drive approved data actions
The Trusted Data Archive provides direct legal-hold and preservation controls. The Trusted Data Refinery applies policy intelligence and governed action across in-place enterprise data.
How The Environment Operates
Understanding precedes governance. Governance precedes action. Nothing is executed before it is explained.
Stage 1
Understand
Scan and classify enterprise content. Identify custodians, ownership, age, duplication, sensitivity, business context, and existing legal-hold signals.
Stage 2
Govern
Apply policy-driven tags and assemble governed collections for Legal, Records, IT, Compliance, and business review.
Stage 3
Execute
Hold, preserve, delete, copy, move, archive, re-tier, or retain a golden copy with a complete audit report.
Lifecycle Governance In One System
Preservation, retention, disposition, and evidence operate as one connected system rather than separate manual programs.
Legal Hold
Place and preserve governed content directly within the Trusted Data Archive.
Hold Precedence
Ensure legal-hold obligations override disposition and prevent conflicting deletion.
Retention
Apply granular rules based on record type, custodian, department, source, content, and time.
Governed Collections
Organize policy-bound or responsive information for controlled review.
Defensible Disposition
Use approval controls, soft-delete periods, and retention-expiry purging.
Golden Copy
Preserve the authoritative copy while eliminating redundant versions.
Move or Re-Tier
Relocate retained information to the Archive, Azure, or lower-cost storage.
Audit
Document what changed, which policy authorized the action, what exceptions were preserved, and why.
Policy Expressed As Tags
Tagging is how policy becomes executable. Each dimension answers a question the enterprise must be able to prove.
Who
User, owner, custodian, role, or department
Tags make information searchable, explainable, and actionable, so policy becomes an operational instruction rather than a document.
Reviewed Before, Proven After
Every governed action is inspected in advance and documented once complete.
Reviewed Before Action
The affected collection
Governing policy criteria
Custodians and ownership
Legal-hold status
Record and sensitivity classifications
Duplicate and golden-copy status
Exceptions requiring preservation
The proposed treatment
Action is never accidental. Every decision is reviewable in advance and provable afterward.
A Control Layer Above The Estate
Data stays in its system of record. Policy, understanding, and action operate consistently above every source.
Smart Stack 3.0 Governed Control Layer
Enterprise information stays where it lives. Understanding, policy, and governed action operate above it, so obligations are applied consistently across every source rather than system by system.
Enterprise Value By Function
One governed environment serves every team that carries a data obligation.
Legal
Place and enforce legal holds, preserve responsive content, create governed collections, and maintain defensible evidence.
Smart Stack 3.0
Understand the data. Apply the policy. Execute the decision. Prove the outcome.
Legal hold, records policy, and defensible disposition operating as one governed environment across the Microsoft estate.
