In today’s digital world, data has emerged as one of an organization’s greatest assets and an overlooked competitive advantage. As with any valuable asset, the need to protect and secure the asset, as well as having the right governance platform in place, should be an organizational priority. A 2022 IBM and Ponemon Institute report finds that the global average cost of a data breach is estimated at $4.35M. Organizations face unprecedented data security challenges due to the rapidly changing technology landscape and increased sophisticated cyber threats. The organizations of today and the future must embrace a host of different approaches including both humans (processes and collaboration) and technologies to achieve optimal data security and compliance. 

Building a Vision 

All organizations have some level of data security and protection in place, ranging from least optimal to most optimal. To move the needle from the least optimal end to the most optimal end, an organization must come up with a data compliance vision that contains the strategy on how to achieve the vision, followed by a roadmap on the delivery and execution plan. 

A complete data compliance vision considers both the governance and the security aspects of the organizational data. Data governance governs how data is collected, shared and used responsibly within regulatory compliance. Data security focuses on protecting data from both internal and external threats. 

Microsoft Purview 

With the need to simplify and centralize the data governance system, organizations with a solid Microsoft technology footprint can consider Microsoft Purview as a unified data governance, protection and management solution. As part of the Microsoft ecosystem, Microsoft Purview is fully integrated with Azure and other Microsoft products, including Office 365. Additionally, Microsoft is committed to continuously enhancing the product platform in response to customer needs, changing technology landscape, and evolving cyber threats. 

Microsoft Purview is a platform rich in capabilities. As such, choosing which capabilities to enable for the organization takes careful consideration and time investment. It is only successful with the collaboration of all stakeholders involved, including the security and governance team, employee engagement team and the product owning team. 

Microsoft Purview addresses two main organizational concerns: Risk & compliance, and data governance. 

Source: What is Microsoft Purview? | Microsoft Learn

Risk & compliance 

The Microsoft Purview risk and compliance features are accessible in the Compliance area of the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Some notable capabilities that bring immediate value to the organization are: 

Data classification 

Data classification is a capability that provides organizations the ability to detect, classify, assess and monitor its data contents. By applying classification to the data, the organization can gain insights into how data is being used and accessed across the organization, and tailor its data governance policy to protect it. 

Auditing 

At any point in time, hundreds of actions are being performed by people across different Microsoft 365 products and services. Microsoft Purview provides a unified auditing capability that can capture, store and archive all user and admin activities in a central location. Custom audit logs can be kept for up to 10 years for compliance and legal purposes.  

Communication compliance 

One important goal of a data governance policy is to minimize risks associated with communication messages including ensuring all communication messages follow the code-of-conduct policies and comply with regulatory obligations. To accomplish this goal, Microsoft Purview leverages the Communication compliance capability to enable the organization to monitor, detect and take actions on communication messages that do not meet the communication compliance policies.  

Data loss prevention (DLP) 

A good data compliance policy focuses on preventive measures to ensure that only authorized data can be shared, transferred or used both inside and outside of the organization. Microsoft Purview includes a DLP capability that enables organizations to establish and set up the data loss prevention policy to detect and prevent unauthorized data from being unintentionally accessed. On occasions when a DLP policy is violated, the appropriated personnel or team can be notified, and follow-up actions can be taken. 

Data lifecycle management 

Another simple preventive measure that organizations can employ to manage cyber risks is to establish data lifecycle management policies that include the archival of valuable contents and removal of unwanted contents. There are also cases where organizations must delete certain contents after a period of time for compliance and regulatory requirements. The Microsoft Purview Data lifecycle management capability provides the organization the ability to create retention policies tailored to meet its compliance, regulatory and business needs. 

Governance

Additionally, Microsoft Purview also offers a feature-rich unified governance portal that delivers great value on Data map, Data catalog, Data sharing and Data estate insight. 

As a global Microsoft Business Applications partner, HCLTech focuses on delivering exceptional values and services to our customers based on Microsoft technology. For more information on how we can help your organization in your adoption journey, contact us today.