A DLP policy contains a few basic things:

Where to protect the content: locations such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business sites, as well as Microsoft Teams chat and channel messages.

When and how to protect the content by enforcing rules comprised of:

Conditions the content must match before the rule is enforced. For example, a rule might be configured to look only for content containing Social Security numbers that's been shared with people outside your organization.

Actions that you want the rule to take automatically when content matching the conditions is found. For example, a rule might be configured to block access to a document and send both the user and compliance officer an email notification.

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/data-loss-prevention-policies