Exploring the Different Areas of Microsoft Purview
Unified Solutions for Data Governance and Security
Microsoft Purview is a comprehensive suite of solutions designed to help organizations manage, govern, and protect their data estate. As enterprises increasingly rely on data to drive decision-making and innovation, Purview offers advanced capabilities to ensure data security, regulatory compliance, and seamless governance across diverse environments, from on-premises to multi-cloud and SaaS applications. Let’s explore the different areas of Microsoft Purview and understand how they collectively empower organizations to maximize the business value of their data while mitigating risks.
Unified Data Governance
At the core of Microsoft Purview lies a unified approach to data governance. Governed data ensures trust and accessibility, which are essential for informed decision-making and operational agility. Purview's unified data governance encompasses:
Data Map: Automates metadata management at scale, enabling the discovery, classification, and lineage tracking of data across hybrid environments. More than 200 built-in data classifiers and support for 35+ data sources provide a robust foundation for mapping the data estate.
Data Catalog: Facilitates effortless discovery of trusted data through intelligent search, browsing, and lineage visualization, enabling users to find the data they need quickly.
Data Estate Insights: Offers a bird’s-eye view of the organization’s data landscape, including sensitive data, asset distribution, and business glossary utilization, helping assess and improve data health.
Data Policy: Allows intuitive authoring and enforcement of data access policies for subscriptions, resources, and storage solutions, ensuring secure data sharing and access control.
Data Sharing: Supports in-place sharing of data within or between organizations, eliminating duplication and enabling near real-time access to shared data.
Information Protection
Microsoft Purview Information Protection is designed to classify and safeguard sensitive data throughout its lifecycle. This area focuses on:
Sensitivity Labels: Enables manual or automated application of labels to classify and protect documents, emails, and files. These labels can enforce policies such as encryption, watermarking, or revocation of access.
Data Classification: Utilizes out-of-the-box sensitive information types, custom classifiers, regular expressions, and trainable models to identify sensitive data at scale.
Endpoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Protects data across devices like Windows 10, MacOS, and Edge Chromium, preventing unauthorized copying, printing, or cloud uploads.
Purview's native integration ensures that sensitive information remains protected across cloud services, on-premises repositories, and third-party solutions like Salesforce or Box.
Data Lifecycle Management
Purview’s Data Lifecycle Management helps organizations classify and govern data at scale while retaining or deleting data based on business requirements. Key capabilities include:
Automated Policy Management: Reduces manual classification efforts by implementing auto-classification mechanisms, ensuring effective management of growing data volumes.
Defensible Disposal: Enables organizations to prove compliance with regulatory requirements by retaining records and securely disposing of data with audit trails and disposition reviews.
Pre-Built Data Connectors: Facilitates the ingestion of non-Microsoft data for improved governance, including social media, text messages, and collaboration data.
Risk and Compliance Management
Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager streamlines regulatory compliance and helps organizations monitor, assess, and improve their compliance posture. Highlights include:
Compliance Score: Provides a quantifiable measure of compliance progress, helping organizations prioritize actions to reduce risks.
Automated Control Mapping: Speeds up compliance efforts by mapping controls across global, industrial, and regional standards.
Customizable Assessments: Offers hundreds of templates for tracking compliance, with features to bring custom internal assessments into the platform.
eDiscovery and Audit
Purview's eDiscovery and Audit solutions enable organizations to investigate, analyze, and preserve data to meet legal, regulatory, and forensic needs. These solutions include:
eDiscovery: A complete suite for discovering, preserving, collecting, and analyzing data in place, featuring advanced features like email threading, near-duplicate detection, and machine learning models to locate valuable content efficiently.
Audit: Extends audit log retention up to 10 years and provides high-bandwidth access to log data for forensic investigations, helping organizations comply with regulatory obligations and reduce penalties for breaches.
Insider Risk Management
Microsoft Purview's Insider Risk Management helps organizations identify and mitigate internal threats while maintaining user privacy. Features include:
Machine Learning Models: Leverages hundreds of built-in models and indicators to detect hidden risks without requiring endpoint agents.
Adaptive Protection: Dynamically enforces controls based on enriched investigation insights, ensuring fast and effective mitigation.
Communication Compliance
Communication Compliance within Purview detects and addresses code-of-conduct violations across Teams, Exchange, and third-party platforms. It features:
Intelligent Playbooks: Pre-configured templates detect violations such as offensive language, sensitive information, or conflicts of interest.
Remediation Workflows: Enable quick actions like removing messages, escalating cases, or notifying users, ensuring compliance and privacy.
Why Microsoft Purview?
Microsoft Purview stands out due to its simplicity, integration, and intelligence. It eliminates the need for additional agents, offers seamless collaboration across productivity tools like Teams and SharePoint, and incorporates machine learning for dynamic risk detection and data classification. With its unified approach and comprehensive features, Purview empowers organizations to manage data effectively, protect sensitive information, and ensure regulatory compliance—all within a trusted ecosystem.
Microsoft Purview proves to be a powerful ally for enterprises navigating today’s complex data landscape. With its unified solutions, organizations can confidently build a data-driven strategy, maximizing efficiency and minimizing risks. Whether it's safeguarding sensitive information, ensuring compliance, or optimizing governance, Purview is the key to unlocking the full potential of your data estate.