In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, organisations of all sizes face an ever-increasing challenge to effectively govern, protect, and manage their data. The rise of remote and hybrid work, the proliferation of cloud services, and the growing complexity of data ecosystems have all contributed to a fragmented data estate that is difficult to oversee and secure.
Enter Microsoft Purview – a comprehensive suite of solutions designed to empower organisations to take control of their data, no matter where it resides. By unifying Microsoft’s data governance, compliance, and information protection capabilities, Purview offers a centralised platform to address the pressing data management needs of modern enterprises.
Microsoft 365 Environment
At the heart of many organisations’ digital infrastructure lies the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. From productivity suites like Office 365 to cloud storage solutions like OneDrive and SharePoint, this expansive platform has become the backbone for communication, collaboration, and content management. However, with this growth comes an increased need for robust data governance and compliance measures.
Microsoft Purview
Microsoft Purview is the company’s response to this challenge, bringing together a suite of integrated solutions to help organisations govern, protect, and manage their data across the entire Microsoft 365 environment and beyond. Purview combines the former Azure Purview and the Microsoft 365 Compliance portfolio, offering a unified approach to data management and risk mitigation.
Data Governance
The data governance capabilities within Microsoft Purview provide organisations with a comprehensive set of tools to discover, classify, and protect sensitive information. This includes the ability to:
- Discover and Classify Data: Leverage advanced data classification models, including machine learning-powered techniques, to identify and categorise sensitive data across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.
- Apply Sensitivity Labels: Empower users to manually apply sensitivity labels to files and emails, or automate the labelling process based on predefined policies.
- Protect Sensitive Data: Integrate with Microsoft Information Protection to enforce access controls, encryption, and other security measures based on the applied sensitivity labels.
Lifecycle Management
Microsoft Purview’s lifecycle management capabilities help organisations effectively manage the retention, archiving, and disposition of content throughout its entire lifecycle. Key features include:
- Retention Policies: Establish comprehensive retention and deletion policies to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and internal data management strategies.
- Disposition Workflows: Streamline the review and approval process for content disposition, providing a documented audit trail to demonstrate compliance.
- Archiving and Disposal: Automate the archiving and secure disposal of content that has reached the end of its retention period, helping to reduce storage costs and mitigate legal and regulatory risks.
Compliance
The compliance solutions within Microsoft Purview assist organisations in navigating the complex landscape of regulatory frameworks and industry-specific standards. Key features include:
- Regulatory Frameworks: Leverage pre-built templates and guidance for common regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS, to ensure your organisation’s compliance posture.
- Risk Assessments: Conduct comprehensive risk assessments to identify potential compliance gaps and vulnerabilities, and generate actionable recommendations for remediation.
- Audit and Reporting: Generate detailed audit trails and compliance reports to demonstrate your organisation’s adherence to regulatory requirements and internal policies.
Microsoft Purview Data Governance
At the heart of Microsoft Purview’s capabilities lies its robust data governance solutions, which empower organisations to gain visibility, control, and protection over their data assets.
Data Classification
The data classification capabilities within Microsoft Purview leverage advanced machine learning algorithms to automatically identify and categorise sensitive information across your Microsoft 365 environment. This includes the ability to detect and classify sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII), financial data, and intellectual property.
By applying sensitivity labels to files and emails, organisations can ensure that appropriate access controls, encryption, and other security measures are enforced, helping to mitigate the risk of data breaches and unauthorised access.
Data Labeling
In addition to automated classification, Microsoft Purview also allows users to manually apply sensitivity labels to content. This empowers employees to take an active role in the data governance process, ensuring that sensitive information is properly identified and protected.
The platform also offers the ability to auto-apply sensitivity labels based on predefined policies, further streamlining the labeling process and ensuring consistent data protection across the organisation.
Data Protection
Once sensitive data has been identified and labelled, Microsoft Purview’s data protection capabilities come into play. By integrating with Microsoft Information Protection, Purview can enforce a range of security controls, including:
- Access Controls: Restrict access to sensitive data based on the applied sensitivity labels, user identity, and other contextual factors.
- Encryption: Automatically encrypt files and emails containing sensitive information to prevent unauthorised access.
- Rights Management: Implement granular controls over the sharing and collaboration of sensitive content, ensuring that it is only accessed by authorised individuals.
These data protection measures help organisations safeguard their most valuable and sensitive information, reducing the risk of data leaks, compliance breaches, and reputational damage.
Microsoft Purview Lifecycle Management
Effective data governance extends beyond just protecting sensitive information – it also requires a comprehensive approach to the management of content throughout its entire lifecycle. Microsoft Purview’s lifecycle management capabilities address this critical need.
Retention Policies
At the core of Microsoft Purview’s lifecycle management are retention policies. These policies allow organisations to define the retention and deletion rules for content, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and internal data management strategies.
Purview’s retention policies can be applied at the organisation, location, or even user level, providing granular control over the content lifecycle. Additionally, the platform offers the ability to create adaptive policy scopes, which dynamically apply retention policies based on factors such as user identity, content type, and sensitivity.
Disposition Workflows
Complementing the retention policies are disposition workflows, which streamline the review and approval process for content that has reached the end of its retention period. This ensures that sensitive information is securely deleted, while also providing a documented audit trail to demonstrate compliance.
Purview’s disposition workflows can be customised to align with your organisation’s specific approval processes, involving relevant stakeholders, such as legal and compliance teams, in the decision-making process.
Archiving and Disposal
To further enhance the lifecycle management capabilities, Microsoft Purview offers robust archiving and disposal features. These include the ability to automatically archive content that has been identified for long-term retention, as well as the secure and compliant disposal of content that has reached the end of its lifecycle.
By automating these processes, organisations can reduce the administrative burden, ensure the proper handling of sensitive information, and maintain a comprehensive audit trail to support regulatory and legal requirements.
Microsoft Purview Compliance
Navigating the complex landscape of regulatory frameworks and industry-specific compliance standards is a significant challenge for many organisations. Microsoft Purview’s compliance solutions aim to simplify this process, helping to ensure that your data management practices align with relevant regulations.
Regulatory Frameworks
Purview provides pre-built templates and guidance for a wide range of regulatory frameworks, including:
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
- Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS)
- And many others
These templates and guidance materials help organisations understand their compliance obligations, identify potential gaps, and implement the necessary controls and processes to meet regulatory requirements.
Risk Assessments
To further support compliance efforts, Microsoft Purview offers comprehensive risk assessment capabilities. By analysing your organisation’s data, policies, and security measures, Purview can identify potential compliance risks and vulnerabilities, and generate actionable recommendations for remediation.
These risk assessments can be customised to align with your specific industry, regulatory environment, and internal policies, ensuring that your compliance strategy is tailored to your unique needs.
Audit and Reporting
Demonstrating compliance is a critical requirement for many organisations, and Microsoft Purview’s audit and reporting features are designed to support this process. The platform generates detailed audit trails, which capture all the actions and changes made within the Purview ecosystem, providing a comprehensive record of your data management activities.
Additionally, Purview offers a range of pre-built compliance reports, as well as the ability to create custom reports to meet your specific reporting requirements. This helps ensure that your organisation can quickly and easily generate the necessary documentation to satisfy regulatory audits and internal compliance reviews.
Securing Your Microsoft 365 Environment
By leveraging the comprehensive capabilities of Microsoft Purview, organisations can effectively secure their Microsoft 365 environment and mitigate the risks associated with data management and compliance.
Identity and Access Management
At the foundation of Purview’s security approach is identity and access management. By integrating with Microsoft Entra Identity Governance, Purview can help ensure that the right people have the right access to the right resources, reducing the risk of unauthorised access and data breaches.
Threat Protection
Purview’s threat protection capabilities, powered by Microsoft Defender for Office 365, provide advanced security measures to safeguard your Microsoft 365 environment from sophisticated attacks, such as phishing and zero-day malware.
Information Protection
Purview’s information protection features, including sensitivity labelling and data loss prevention, work in tandem to ensure that sensitive data is properly identified, classified, and protected from unauthorised access or exfiltration.
Microsoft Purview Integration
Microsoft Purview is designed to seamlessly integrate with the broader Microsoft 365 ecosystem, as well as support hybrid deployments and third-party integrations.
Microsoft 365 Ecosystem
By leveraging the existing investments and infrastructure within your Microsoft 365 environment, Purview can leverage data and security controls across a range of services, including:
- Exchange Online
- SharePoint Online
- OneDrive for Business
- Microsoft Teams
- And more
This tight integration ensures that your data governance, lifecycle management, and compliance efforts are consistently applied across your Microsoft 365 landscape.
Hybrid Deployments
Recognising that many organisations operate in a hybrid environment, with a mix of on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure, Microsoft Purview is designed to support seamless data management across these diverse ecosystems.
Third-Party Integrations
To address the growing complexity of modern data environments, Microsoft Purview also offers the ability to integrate with third-party data sources and services. This includes the use of data connectors to ingest and manage content from a wide range of external platforms, ensuring that your data governance and compliance efforts extend beyond the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
Data Privacy and Regulations
As organisations navigate the ever-evolving landscape of data privacy regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and industry-specific standards like HIPAA, Microsoft Purview provides the tools and guidance to help ensure compliance.
GDPR
Purview’s pre-built GDPR templates and risk assessment capabilities help organisations identify and address potential compliance gaps, ensuring that personal data is properly identified, protected, and managed in accordance with the regulation’s requirements.
HIPAA
For organisations operating in the healthcare sector, Purview’s HIPAA-specific guidance and controls assist in the protection of sensitive patient information, helping to meet the regulatory obligations for the handling of protected health information (PHI).
Industry-Specific Compliance
Beyond these common regulatory frameworks, Microsoft Purview offers support for a wide range of industry-specific compliance requirements, including those in the financial, manufacturing, and public sectors, among others.
Monitoring and Reporting
To ensure the ongoing effectiveness of your data governance, lifecycle management, and compliance efforts, Microsoft Purview offers a range of monitoring and reporting capabilities.
Dashboards and Analytics
Purview’s intuitive dashboards and analytics tools provide real-time visibility into the state of your data, including the classification of sensitive information, the application of retention policies, and the status of compliance initiatives.
Alerts and Notifications
The platform also offers proactive alerts and notifications, which can be customised to notify relevant stakeholders of potential compliance issues, policy violations, or other data management concerns, allowing for timely intervention and remediation.
Compliance Reporting
To demonstrate adherence to regulatory requirements and internal policies, Microsoft Purview generates comprehensive compliance reports, which can be tailored to the specific needs of your organisation, auditors, and regulatory bodies.
By leveraging these monitoring and reporting capabilities, organisations can maintain a tight grip on their data management practices, quickly identify and address any areas of concern, and ensure ongoing compliance with the relevant laws, regulations, and industry standards.
Conclusion
In today’s data-driven, hybrid work environment, the need for robust data governance, lifecycle management, and compliance has never been more critical. Microsoft Purview offers a comprehensive, integrated solution to help organisations of all sizes secure their Microsoft 365 environment, protect sensitive information, and meet their regulatory obligations.
By leveraging the power of Purview, you can gain visibility and control over your data, automate key data management processes, and demonstrate compliance to auditors and regulatory bodies. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, Microsoft Purview is poised to be a trusted partner in your journey to a more secure, compliant, and data-driven future.
