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INDUSTRIES

Six regulated industries, one way of working.

Your regulator, your client and your board each ask a different question about AI, and the honest answer is the same shape in every industry: a named boundary, a person at the gate, and evidence on file. Each page below shows one sample workflow in a fictional firm from your industry, the Microsoft control behind it with the date it was checked, and the free check to run first.

01 Source02 Boundary03 Human decision04 Evidence

PICK YOUR REGULATOR

One sample workflow for each industry.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Give an AI agent a boundary the risk team can inspect.

The CEO wants Copilot this quarter, compliance wants a record and your name is on the incident if an agent acts on an assumption. At fictional Hartwell Trust Bank, an agent proposes a policy exception, a named approver checks the exact action before any change, and the decision is recorded for the examiner.

Read the financial services page
LEGAL

Keep matter context within its permission boundary.

You do not need to understand how it works. You need to know what it can see, and who decided that. A fictional firm drafts a matter summary from approved documents: access checks run before retrieval, and a lawyer reviews the cited draft before it leaves the workspace.

Read the legal page
HEALTHCARE

Review access before clinical operations use an assistant.

Show me the test, not the slide that says it was tested. A fictional provider runs an administrative workflow on sample data, checks identity and data handling, exercises the escalation route, and keeps clinical decisions with qualified staff.

Read the healthcare page
PRIVATE EQUITY

Proof for the deal clock.

An operating partner does not need another assessment deck. You need a go or no-go in writing for each add-on, a Day 1 that holds, and a portfolio that reports the same way after close.

Read the private equity page
ARCHITECTURE, ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION

Every line item explained, every brief approved.

The CFO sees phase one with a price and phase two with a question mark. The project executive finds out the brief was wrong from the owner. Both want the same thing: workflows inside Microsoft 365 with a person at the action and a bill that is explained.

Read the architecture, engineering and construction page
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

Tools that live inside your Microsoft 365, governed like everything else.

Every tool the firm buys lives outside Microsoft 365 and you end up governing it by hand. The fix is a CRM, a marketing method and a project record that sign in with Microsoft Entra, keep data in your tenant, and expose their actions to Copilot and agents under Microsoft Agent 365.

Read the professional services page

THE PATTERN

What do the six industry pages have in common?

Each shows one sample workflow in a fictional firm from that industry, names the Microsoft control behind it with the date it was checked, and ends in the free check to run first.

The firms are fictional and say so. The controls, the dates and the rules are real, read from Microsoft Learn and the regulator, and the register behind every page is refreshed on a schedule.

THE MICROSOFT INSIGHT

Why does the industry change the control, not the method?

Because the rule changes what counts as evidence: Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance ships classifiers mapped to FINRA rules for a broker-dealer, while a law firm needs privilege kept out of a prompt and a hospital needs patient data kept inside approved systems.

Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance ships trainable classifiers for money laundering, stock manipulation, regulatory collusion and unauthorized disclosure, mapped to obligations such as FINRA rules and the Securities Exchange Act. (Microsoft Learn, checked Oct 31, 2026)

Start from the rule and the control fits the evidence your examiner asks for. Start from a generic AI policy and you discover the gap in the audit.

HOW TO CHOOSE

Which page should you read first?

The one for the regulator you answer to. Financial services for FINRA, the SEC and NYDFS; legal for privilege and client confidentiality; healthcare for HIPAA; private equity for a deal and the day after close; AEC for project data and site teams; professional services for client work inside Microsoft 365.

If your firm sits across two, read both; the controls overlap more than the rules do, and the scoping call sorts the rest.

WHAT IS THE SAME EVERYWHERE

What does not change by industry?

The four gates. Read-only discovery first (we read, we change nothing). A record of what was tested and what was assumed. A pilot before any wave, with the rollback written first. Your written decision per phase.

The same engineers, the same register of dated facts and the same catalog of fixed engagements serve every industry; the page you land on only changes the example and the rule.

NOT ON THE LIST

What if your industry is not one of the six?

Read the page closest to your regulator and book the call. Government, education, energy, manufacturing and media firms work with the same controls; the sample workflow is simply not written yet.

The six are the industries the firm serves most. A seventh page is written when the third client in an industry asks the same question.

THE MONEY

Is any of this priced by industry?

No. Every engagement is quoted after a scoping call, assessment separate from implementation, and no price appears on this site. Microsoft funding is checked for your Microsoft 365 (your tenant) before it appears in a proposal.

AFTER TWO WEEKS

What will be working after two weeks?

  1. You have read the page for your regulator and know which free check to run first.
  2. You have run it and hold a dated PDF with the three things to fix first.
  3. If you booked the call, the engineer has read your check before it starts.
  4. Nothing in your Microsoft 365 has changed and nobody at Simplicity IT has access to it.

HONEST ABOUT LIMITS

What this does not do yet

It does not describe a preview feature as available. Blocking a Copilot or Cowork response when the typed prompt contains chosen sensitive information types is in preview and rolling out to tenants. (Microsoft Learn, checked Oct 31, 2026, preview) Where an industry page relies on a preview control it says so, and the register carries the date it was checked and the date it is checked again.

It does not know your tenant: the industry page shows the shape, and read-only discovery shows the facts.

It does not write your policy: the AI Use Policy Builder does that from your own answers, with the control behind each clause.

THE ONE THING TO REMEMBER

Same method everywhere; the rule picks the control, and the evidence is what your examiner asks for.

Said another way: the industry page tells you which control to test first and why.

Said a third way: the firm is fictional, the control and its date are not.

DIRECT ANSWERS

Questions before you decide.

Are the firms on the industry pages real clients?

No. Each sample workflow runs in a fictional firm that says so on the page. Real customer feedback, as it was published, is on the proof page; no client is named without permission.

Do you only work in these six industries?

No. The six are the industries the firm serves most. Government, education, energy, manufacturing and media firms work with the same controls and start with the same scoping call.

How current are the rules the pages cite?

Each Microsoft fact carries the date it was checked on Microsoft Learn, and each regulatory date is cited to its source. The register is refreshed on a schedule and after major Microsoft events.

Where do I start if I am not sure which industry applies?

Book the fifteen-minute scoping call or run the Copilot readiness check. Both work without naming an industry, and both end with the next step written down.

NEXT STEP

Start with a boundary you can explain.

Choose a focused check, or speak with the team about the workflow you need to improve.

More business environments

Explore the operating boundaries for these organizational teams. These pages describe sector needs, not customer results.