Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps file policies retirement and huge costs for 3rd party Purview file policies.
Logged into Defender for Cloud Apps today and received the following notification
>MDA SPO & 3P File Policies are being deprecated — December 31, 2026
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps SPO and 3rd-party File policies will be retired. Migrate your policies to Microsoft Purview DLP to ensure continued data protection coverage after December 31, 2026.
It looks like existing per-user licenses take care of first party data sources. However, third party data sources are under a pay-as-you-go license.
According to the learn docs the pricing applies to all files in scope (don't have to be matched by a policy).
>Counting assets
>Assets are counted based on the number of items that are in the scope of a policy. The asset doesn't have to match a policy's conditions to be counted, it just has to be in a location that's in the scope of a policy. An asset is only counted once, regardless of how many solutions or protection policies cover it.
According to the purview pricing it applies to
>Billing is calculated based upon the number of assets at rest that are auto-labeled and protected under these policies
and
>You're charged for each day that a policy covers an asset.
The price is $.50 per month per asset.
So, if you have a Google Workspace with 1 million files total and 1 thousand matched via policy, $500 per month.
Just saw this today and wanted to put an FYI out there.
edited to clarify that the pricing is per asset covered by a policy