EU Passport Number

Detects EU passport number patterns. This pattern is based on a Microsoft Purview built-in sensitive information type. Users already running Purview may prefer to enable the built-in SIT directly, or use this version as a starting point for customisation. This is a broad, multi-country SIT that aggregates passport number detection across EU member states.

Type: regex
Engine: universal
Confidence: medium
Confidence justification: Medium confidence: broad multi-country pattern that relies on corroborative keywords to reduce false positive rates across diverse passport formats. Added context gating and exclusion rules improve precision and reduce incidental matches.
Detection quality: Mixed
Jurisdictions: eu
Regulations: GDPR
Frameworks: ISO 27001, ISO 27701
Data categories: pii, government-id
Scope: wide
Risk rating: 8
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?i)\\b(?:eu\\s+passport\\s+number|passport)\\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

passport, travel document, passport number, eu passport, ID number, identification, ID card, license, permit, registration, certificate, field, column, row, entry, record, value, form, register, database (+20 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

AB1234567 — Generic EU passport format with letter prefix and digits
XY987654 — Generic EU passport format with letter prefix and digits
123456789 — Numeric-only format used by some EU member states

Should not match

ABCDEFGHIJ — All letters with no digits
12345 — Too short to be any EU passport number
template example placeholder record identifier — Template/sample context should be excluded even when anchor words are present

Known false positives

Generic alphanumeric sequences matching passport format in unrelated contexts. Mitigation: Require corroborative evidence keywords within the proximity window.

References

EU passport number entity definition - Microsoft Learn