SC-401 replaced the old SC-400 as Microsoft's information protection exam, and the credential is called Microsoft Certified: Information Security Administrator Associate. The study guide splits it into three roughly equal domains: implement information protection, implement data loss prevention and retention, and manage risks, alerts and activities. You get 100 minutes, need 700 to pass, and renewal is a free online assessment once a year. The reason it belongs on this site is the sub-section called protect data used by AI services. It asks you to implement Purview controls and Microsoft 365 workload controls for environments that use AI, set up the prerequisites for DSPM for AI, manage its roles and permissions, configure its policies, and monitor activity in it.
That list matches what I have seen go wrong in real Copilot deployments. The AI itself rarely does anything clever. It just finds files that were already shared too widely and summarises them for someone who should never have seen them. Labels, DLP and auditing are how you stop that, and this exam drills all three. The free Microsoft Learn path is decent and the practice assessment is a useful reality check.
What the free material cannot give you is a tenant with the right licences. Many of the Purview features on the exam need E5 or add-on licensing, and a trial tenant is the only realistic way to click through them. Budget time for setting that up, and for the fact that Microsoft renames portal sections often enough that a six-month-old YouTube walkthrough may not match what you see. One timing note. The certification page says the English version is being updated in October 2026, and the study guide lists skills measured as of 28 October.
From the change log the AI section stays, with minor tweaks elsewhere. Read the current study guide before you book. I rate it 4.2. As an AI course it is narrow. As practical preparation for securing AI assistants inside Microsoft 365, I have not found anything better, and most of it is free.