Best Practices and Prescriptive Guidance for Inventorying and Classifying Data using Microsoft Purview
Empowering your organization to manage data effectively and securely
Inventorying and classifying data effectively is crucial for achieving compliance, ensuring security, and enhancing decision-making. Microsoft Purview, a robust data governance solution, provides the tools necessary to streamline these processes. This blog post presents best practices and prescriptive guidance for leveraging Microsoft Purview to inventory and classify data, enabling your organization to extract maximum value while safeguarding sensitive information.
Understanding Microsoft Purview
Microsoft Purview is designed to help organizations manage their data estate comprehensively. It offers capabilities for data discovery, classification, lineage tracking, and governance across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. By providing visibility into structured and unstructured data sources, Purview empowers organizations to make informed decisions, mitigate risks, and demonstrate compliance.
Why Inventory and Classify Data?
Compliance and Security
Inventorying and classifying data are essential steps in meeting regulatory requirements such as GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and others. Knowing where sensitive data resides and categorizing it effectively ensures adherence to rules and prevents costly breaches.
Data Optimization
Proper classification enables organizations to prioritize storage and processing resources, focusing on high-value data while minimizing redundancy. It leads to improved efficiency and cost savings.
Enhanced Decision-Making
When data is well-organized and clearly categorized, businesses can extract actionable insights with greater accuracy, driving innovation and strategic growth.
Best Practices for Inventorying Data using Microsoft Purview
1. Establish Clear Objectives
Before beginning the data inventory process, define your goals. Are you aiming for regulatory compliance, better data utilization, or strengthening security? Clear objectives will guide your strategy and help prioritize efforts in inventorying high-value or sensitive data.
2. Map Your Data Estate
Microsoft Purview enables organizations to create a holistic map of their data estate by connecting to various data sources, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or across hybrid environments. Use Purview’s data scanning capability to automatically discover assets and metadata from services like Azure SQL Database, Amazon S3, and Microsoft 365.
3. Automate Data Discovery
One of Purview’s key strengths is its ability to automate data discovery. Schedule scans for your data sources to ensure that inventory remains current and accurate. This automation reduces the manual workload and ensures consistency across the data estate.
4. Regularly Update and Audit
Data inventories are dynamic. Conduct regular scans and audits to account for new data assets, changing classifications, or expired datasets. Microsoft Purview’s reporting capabilities allow you to visualize and monitor inventory changes over time.
5. Integrate with Existing Tools
If your organization already uses tools like Power BI, Azure Synapse Analytics, or other systems, integrate them with Purview. This integration ensures seamless data flow and provides greater visibility across your analytics ecosystem.
Best Practices for Classifying Data using Microsoft Purview
1. Define Classification Categories
Start by defining classification categories that align with your organization’s needs. Common categories include Personally Identifiable Information (PII), financial data, intellectual property, and public data. Microsoft Purview supports customizable classifications tailored to your use case.
2. Leverage Built-in and Custom Classifiers
Purview offers a range of built-in classifiers for common data types, such as credit card numbers and social security numbers. However, for organization-specific needs, create custom classifiers to identify proprietary data effectively.
3. Employ Sensitivity Labels
Use sensitivity labels within Microsoft Purview to classify data as Confidential, Highly Confidential, or Public. These labels provide an additional layer of security and guide users on handling data appropriately. Sensitivity labels integrate seamlessly with Microsoft 365 applications.
4. Utilize Machine Learning for Accuracy
Microsoft Purview’s machine learning capabilities enhance classification accuracy by identifying patterns and context within data. Implement machine learning models to improve the detection of sensitive information across unstructured files, such as emails and documents.
5. Involve Stakeholders
Engage departments like legal, compliance, and IT to ensure classification aligns with business priorities and regulatory requirements. Collaboration fosters a shared understanding of data governance objectives and reduces silos.
Prescriptive Guidance for Implementing Microsoft Purview
Step 1: Set Up Microsoft Purview
Begin by configuring Microsoft Purview within your Azure environment. Assign appropriate roles and permissions to ensure only authorized personnel can access sensitive data.
Step 2: Connect Data Sources
Connect all relevant data sources to Purview. Use connectors for databases, file systems, and cloud services to create a centralized inventory of assets.
Step 3: Conduct Initial Data Scan
Perform an initial scan to identify and inventory data assets. Review the results and refine scanning settings to capture metadata comprehensively.
Step 4: Apply Classification Policies
Define classification policies based on organizational and regulatory requirements. Implement these policies within Purview and assign sensitivity labels where applicable.
Step 5: Monitor and Optimize
Use Purview’s dashboard and analytics tools to monitor inventory and classification progress. Identify areas for improvement and refine classification models as needed.
TLDR
Inventorying and classifying data are foundational practices in effective data governance, and Microsoft Purview provides the technology to accomplish these tasks at scale. By following these best practices and prescriptive guidance, organizations can ensure data is secure, compliant, and optimized for value creation. Whether you are embarking on your governance journey or enhancing existing processes, Microsoft Purview is an indispensable tool for managing your data estate with precision and care.