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2 min read

A simpler, more integrated approach to data governance

  • By Alym Rayani, Vice President, Microsoft Security Go-To-Market

It’s no secret that the volume of data created by organizations and people multiplies daily. And, in the digital—and hybrid work—world we live in, that data is spread across more tools, platforms, devices, and clouds than ever before, creating regulatory challenges and security risks.

Organizations must understand what data they have and where it lives, how it is used, and critically, how it’s all governed. How an organization stores its data and how long it is kept is not just a regulatory compliance issue, but also a security issue.

Today, I’m excited to share the general availability of Microsoft Azure Purview, giving organizations that holistic understanding of their data that is so critically important. Azure Purview addresses the need for full visibility across all the places where your data lives, making it easier to manage, glean insights, and govern.

Whether your data is housed on-premises in services like Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle,  different clouds like Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3, or software as a service (SaaS) applications like Salesforce, with Azure Purview you can easily create a unified map of your data assets and their relationships with automated data discovery and sensitive data classification, get insight into the location and movement of data across your hybrid landscape, and empower data consumers to find valuable data through a data catalog.

For more details about Azure Purview, check out the Azure Purview blog today.

Simplifying data protection and governance management

Managing an organization’s data from a protection and governance perspective can be simplified with Azure Purview and Microsoft Information Protection (MIP). MIP is a built-in, intelligent, unified, and extensible solution to protect sensitive data in documents and emails across your organization. MIP provides a unified set of capabilities to know and protect your data and prevent data loss across Microsoft 365 apps (like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook), services (like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Exchange, and Microsoft Power BI), on-premises locations (like SharePoint Server and on-premises files shares), devices, and third-party apps and services (like Box and Dropbox).

Azure Purview integrates with MIP so that you can apply the same sensitivity labels defined in the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center to data assets in Azure Purview. This helps you have a comprehensive view of your data across your entire estate so you know where your sensitive data lies and can govern it accordingly.

This integration also lets you write your policies once in MIP and apply them to Azure Purview. It lets you streamline and integrate governance and protection. Azure Purview and MIP share this capability. So, if you are already using MIP to apply sensitivity labels to data related to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that label now applies to data governed in Azure Purview. From emails to databases, MIP and Azure Purview give you a simplified, integrated approach to governance.

The journey to simplifying the complexity of data governance

For organizations to overcome the uncertainty of the safety of their data today—not to mention the complexity of data regulations—organizations must have a birds-eye view of all their data. Taking an integrated and more simplified approach to data governance will not only help you to better understand and analyze your data but also reduce your attack surface. In our environment today, this is a must.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.