Introduction to Microsoft Purview

Last Updated on May 27, 2024 by Arnav Sharma

Microsoft Purview is a unified suite of tools and services designed to help organizations effectively manage and govern their entire data estate. It provides a holistic view of data across on-premises, multi-cloud and SaaS environments, helping you:

• Understand Your Data: Create a comprehensive map of your data assets through automated data discovery and classification. Microsoft Purview helps identify where sensitive, important, or redundant data resides within your organization.
• Govern Your Data: Maintain control over your data by setting policies, access controls, and retention rules. Purview helps you manage the data lifecycle efficiently, ensuring it meets your internal requirements and external regulations.
• Protect Your Data: Secure sensitive data throughout its lifecycle with advanced encryption, access restrictions, and labeling. Microsoft Purview offers powerful tools for data loss prevention and information protection.
• Manage Risk and Compliance: Mitigate risks and confidently address regulatory challenges like GDPR and others with compliance assessment tools, sensitive data detection, and granular policy management.

While Microsoft Purview is an integrated platform, here are some of its core components:

• Microsoft Purview Data Map: The foundation of Purview, the Data Map scans and catalogs data sources across your organization. It identifies data relationships and classifies sensitive information, giving you deep visibility into your data landscape.
• Microsoft Purview Data Catalog: This searchable catalog acts as a business glossary, empowering data consumers to find and understand relevant data for more informed decision-making.
• Microsoft Purview Data Estate Insights: This feature provides reports and analytics on the health of your data estate. This enables you to track data metrics, identify bottlenecks, and optimize data governance processes.
• Microsoft Purview Data Policy: Create, implement, and enforce data policies across your organization for consistent handling and compliance alignment.
• Microsoft Purview Information Protection: Discover, classify, label, and protect sensitive data wherever it resides or travels, both within and outside your organization.

Core Features of Microsoft Purview

• Unified Data Governance: Microsoft Purview aims to revolutionize data governance by breaking down silos between different Microsoft platforms. It integrates seamlessly with:
  • Azure: Connects to Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure SQL, Azure Synapse, and more, extending governance to your data in the Azure cloud.
  • Microsoft 365: Purview’s capabilities extend to Microsoft 365 services like Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive, facilitating governance enforcement and sensitive data management.
  • Power BI: Allows consistent classification and labeling in Power BI datasets and dashboards.
  • On-premises: Purview can scan on-premises SQL Servers and other data repositories.
  This unified approach ensures a consistent way to discover, classify, and manage data across your entire ecosystem, regardless of the where it resides.
• Compliance Management: Microsoft Purview includes a dedicated compliance portal to manage regulatory obligations more confidently. Features include:
  • Compliance Assessments: Pre-built and customizable templates for evaluating your compliance posture against standards like GDPR, CCPA, and others.
  • Compliance Score: A metric to track compliance progress and pinpoint areas requiring improvement.
  • Policy Management: Centrally create, apply, and monitor data usage policies that align with your internal needs and regulatory requirements.
• Data Protection: Discuss Purview safeguards data with multi-layered protection:
  • Sensitive Data Discovery: Automatically scan, identify, and classify sensitive information (PII, financial data, health data, etc.) across your data estate.
  • Data Classification: Apply custom or built-in labels for persistent tracking and control of sensitive data.
  • Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Enforce policies to prevent unauthorized sharing or misuse of classified data. DLP can monitor data movement, block actions, or send alerts as needed.
• Insider Risk Management: Purview’s insider risk management tackles potential threats originating from within the company. It uses signals, machine learning, and behavioral analytics to:
  • Identify Potential Risks: Detect unusual or suspicious activity relating to data access, movement, or exfiltration.
  • Investigate & Act: Provides tools for detailed investigations and allows you to define response actions for containment and remediation.
• Adaptive Protection: Adaptive protection in Purview involves intelligent models that learn from your organization’s data usage patterns. It allows you to:
  • Tailor Policies: Create more granular DLP rules based on user roles, sensitivity levels, locations, and real-time risk indicators.
  • Reduce False Positives: Improve the accuracy of risk detection by minimizing irrelevant disruptions or blocking actions.
• Information Protection and Governance: Purview tackles both of these challenges:
  • Information Protection:
    • Enforces labels and classification.
    • Applies encryption & access restrictions tailored to sensitivity.
  • Lifecycle Management:
    • Define retention periods for different data types.
    • Implement automated deletion or archival processes aligned with your organization’s policies and legal considerations.

Key Benefits of Microsoft Purview

• Enhanced Data Security: 
  • Proactive Risk Mitigation: Purview’s automated data discovery and classification features enable a proactive approach to data security. By knowing what sensitive data you have and where it exists, you can prioritize its protection.
  • Centralized Control: Purview offers a single platform to enforce data loss prevention (DLP) policies, manage encryption, and control access across your data landscape, streamlining security operations.
  • Insider Threat Detection: The sophisticated insider risk management capabilities help identify and mitigate potential malicious or accidental data leaks and compromises from within your organization.
• Improved Compliance Posture: 
  • Compliance Mapping: Purview provides tools for mapping data flows and controls to the specific requirements of regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and others.
  • Automated Evidence: Its data cataloging and reporting aid in generating auditable evidence of your compliance efforts.
  • Reduced Risk: By improving visibility of data subject to regulations and applying appropriate controls, Purview helps minimize the potential for fines and reputational damage associated with non-compliance.
• Data Insight and Visibility: 
  • Data Map: The core data map provides a holistic, searchable view of your data estate, shedding light on previously hidden data assets and their relationships.
  • Data Catalog: The self-service style data catalog improves accessibility and understanding of relevant data for analysts, data scientists, and business users.
  • Data Estate Insights: Purview’s reporting tools provide valuable metrics on data usage patterns, lineage, data quality, and more, facilitating informed decisions around data strategy.
• Efficiency and Cost Savings: 
  • Reduced Manual Effort: Automated data discovery and classification significantly decrease the time and resources previously spent on manual data mapping and labeling effort..
  • Centralized Management: Eliminates the need for redundant compliance and governance tools. A single platform simplifies administration and reduces licensing overhead.
  • Proactive Risk Management: Minimizes costs associated with data breaches, fines, and remediation by preventing incidents earlier in the process.

Microsoft Purview in Action: Use Cases

• Regulatory Compliance: 
  • GDPR Example: An EU-based company utilizes Purview to:
    • Map personal data across systems.
    • Apply classification labeling for “Right to Erasure” requests.
    • Set retention rules based on GDPR guidance.
    • Generate compliance reports to demonstrate adherence.
  • HIPAA Example: A healthcare provider applies Purview to:
    • Identify and label protected health information (PHI)
    • Enforce access controls and DLP for PHI datastores
    • Monitor for unusual PHI access patterns (potential breach signals)
    • Maintain records of data usage for audit purposes.
• Data Discovery and Classification: 
  • Global Enterprise: A multinational corporation uses Purview’s automated data discovery and classification across cloud storage, corporate file shares, and email systems.
    • Locates customer PII previously uncatalogued.
    • Identifies redundant or obsolete data for potential savings.
    • Applies classification and DLP accordingly to sensitive information.
  • Financial Firm: A financial institution streamlines reporting by:
    • Automating data classification for financial statements and risk models
    • Applying relevant access controls across teams
• Insider Threat Detection: 
  • IP Protection: A software company uses Purview to:
    • Monitor activity around code repositories and design documents.
    • Detect unusual file transfers of large amounts of source code to personal cloud storage.
    • Alert security teams, enabling proactive investigation and potential IP theft prevention.
  • Pre-departure Monitoring: Purview helps an HR team by:
    • Flagging unusual download activity from an employee’s OneDrive two weeks before their resignation.
    • Facilitating an investigation, preserving potential evidence of the exfiltration of customer lists.
• Cross-platform Data Governance: 
  • Hybrid Environment: A manufacturing company extends their data governance framework by:
    • Incorporating Azure SQL databases into their Purview data map.
    • Catalogs and classifies data in an AWS S3 data lake.
    • Enforcing consistent labeling and access policies for on-premises file shares and cloud storage simultaneously.
  • SaaS Management: A global NGO uses Purview to:
    • Gain visibility into data held within Salesforce and other SaaS applications.
    • Monitor and set DLP rules relating to donor information to maintain compliance and mitigate risks.

Getting Started with Microsoft Purview

Prerequisites

• Azure Subscription: You need an Azure subscription. If you don’t have one, you can create a free trial account.

Getting Started Guide

• Access the New Purview Portal: Navigate to https://purview.microsoft.com. If you don’t have an account yet, you’ll be prompted to create one.

• Create Your First Account:
  • Company Information: Provide basic details about your company or organization.
  • Classification: Pick the initial classification options that align with the type of sensitive data you might manage (financial, healthcare, etc.). This can be adjusted later.
  • Complete Setup: Follow the prompts, and your Purview account will be created within the new portal environment.

Solutions:

Trials and recommendations:

Best Practices

• Start Small: Begin with a pilot project focusing on a specific data domain or business unit. This helps you gain experience and refine processes.
• Define Clear Goals: Determine what you want to achieve with Purview (e.g., compliance, risk reduction, data quality). This will guide your implementation choices.
• Involve Stakeholders: Get input from IT, business users, legal, and compliance teams to ensure the solution meets everyone’s needs.
• Set Up a Data Governance Framework: Develop a clear governance structure with roles, responsibilities, and policies before deploying Purview at scale.
• Utilize Built-In Templates: Take advantage of Purview’s pre-defined templates for compliance and sensitivity labeling to accelerate setup.
• Ongoing Monitoring and Refinement: Data governance is an iterative process. Regularly review your Purview insights and adapt policies and configurations as needed.

What’s New in Microsoft Purview

Since Purview is actively evolving, it’s best to refer to the official source for the absolute latest: What’s new in Microsoft Purview: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/whats-new. However, here are some prominent recent updates:

• Multi-Cloud Support: Microsoft Purview’s integration with Microsoft Defender for Cloud allows assessment of compliance across Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform. This provides a unified compliance view across a multi-cloud environment.
• Communication Compliance Updates: New features for detecting Microsoft 365 for Copilot interactions, a consolidated view of policies, and enhancements for Viva Engage messages.
• eDiscovery Guest Review: Provides the ability to grant reviewers outside of your organization secure access to eDiscovery cases, streamlining collaboration on investigations.
• New Sensitive Information Types: Expanded range of built-in sensitive information types for simplified data classification and policy creation.
• Purview Portal (Preview): Continued development of a streamlined Purview interface for data governance, discovery, and compliance management.

Future Outlook

While predicting the future is never foolproof, here’s what we can reasonably expect, given both Microsoft’s stated goals and broader industry directions:

• Enhanced AI-Driven Automation: Continued improvement in the intelligence and automation of data discovery, classification, policy recommendation, and adaptive security. This will reduce manual governance workloads further.
• Tighter Integration with Microsoft 365 and Azure: Expect even deeper hooks into the Microsoft ecosystem, enabling better protection, control, and insights derived from the core productivity and cloud platforms.
• Expanded Multi-Cloud and SaaS Governance: As organizations adopt more diverse services, Purview’s scope of governance will likely expand to a wider range of supported platforms for visibility and control.
• Simplification for Broader Adoption: While powerful, data governance can be complex. Microsoft will likely push towards simplifying and democratizing access to Purview capabilities, allowing non-IT teams to self-manage aspects of data compliance and protection.
• Increased Focus on Privacy: As regulations and public awareness of data privacy increase, Purview’s tools for granular consent management, data subject rights (like the right to be forgotten), and privacy risk analysis will likely see significant development.

FAQ: Microsoft Purview Resources

Q: What is Microsoft Purview and how does it enhance data security and compliance?

Microsoft Purview is a comprehensive set of data governance solutions designed to protect sensitive information and ensure data security and compliance across your entire data estate. It provides a unified data governance solution that combines the capabilities of former Azure Purview with additional features for data protection, information protection, and risk and compliance solutions. Microsoft Purview helps organizations to protect and govern their sensitive data across various data sources, ensuring access to data is securely managed and compliance with regulatory requirements is maintained.

Q: How does Microsoft Purview support the protection and governance of sensitive data?

Microsoft Purview provides solutions to help protect your sensitive data and govern data across your entire data estate, including data wherever it lives. Its key features include creating a unified data map, ensuring data protection policies are applied consistently, and providing insights into data lineage and data estate insights. This allows organizations to protect data wherever it lives and share data securely, while also provisioning access to data in a controlled manner.

Q: What are the key features of Microsoft Purview and how do they contribute to data governance?

The key features of Microsoft Purview include information protection, sensitive data protection across your entire data estate, and the creation of a data catalog that helps organizations understand and manage their data more effectively. Microsoft Purview’s unified data map and data catalog facilitate better data governance by providing a comprehensive view of data across the organization, thereby enabling more effective data protection, compliance, and data estate insights.

Q: How does Microsoft Purview integrate with other Microsoft products to enhance data security?

Microsoft Purview integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products, including Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Information Protection, to enhance data security and compliance. This integration supports a holistic approach to data governance, allowing for the protection of sensitive data across different Microsoft platforms and ensuring consistent compliance and data protection policies across the entire data estate.

Q: What resources are available for organizations looking to implement Microsoft Purview?

Organizations looking to implement Microsoft Purview can access a wealth of resources provided by Microsoft, including Microsoft Learn, security updates, and the Microsoft Purview compliance portal. These resources offer guidance on how to effectively use Microsoft Purview for data governance, protection, and compliance, including tutorials, best practices, and information on key features and capabilities. Additionally, organizations can follow Microsoft for the latest news and updates on security and compliance solutions.

Q: How can you protect your data using Microsoft Purview?

Protection with Microsoft Purview involves using its comprehensive suite of tools designed for data protection, governance, and compliance. It scales with Microsoft Purview to cover data across your entire data estate, ensuring protection wherever data lives.

Q: What resources are available for understanding and implementing protection with Microsoft Purview?

Microsoft Purview resources include a wealth of information on the official website, documentation for setup and usage, best practices for information protection, and access to the Microsoft Purview governance portal for hands-on data management.

Q: Why is it important to follow Microsoft’s updates and guidelines for data protection?

Following Microsoft ensures you stay informed on the latest in data protection technologies, updates to Microsoft Purview solutions, and insights on leveraging tools like Microsoft 365 for compliance and information security.

Q: How does Microsoft 365 enhance data protection and compliance?

Microsoft 365 compliance features, integrated with Microsoft Purview, offer advanced information protection capabilities, enabling organizations to safeguard sensitive data and meet regulatory requirements seamlessly across their data landscape.

Q: What are the key solutions offered by Microsoft Purview for data protection and governance?

Microsoft Purview solutions encompass data protection, compliance, risk management, and governance tools, combining capabilities of Microsoft 365 with advanced analytics to govern data across and protect data wherever it lives.

Q: How does Microsoft Copilot contribute to data governance and protection?

Microsoft Copilot, integrated within Microsoft Purview, leverages AI to enhance data governance and protection strategies, offering innovative ways to manage and share data securely and efficiently.

Q: What is the significance of being able to govern data across your entire data estate with Microsoft Purview?

Governing data across your entire data estate with Microsoft Purview ensures comprehensive visibility, control, and protection of data assets, facilitating compliance with global regulations and protecting against data breaches.