In today’s data-driven world, managing, protecting, and governing information is more complex and critical than ever. With data sprawling across on-premises systems, multiple clouds, and SaaS applications, organisations face significant challenges in ensuring compliance, mitigating risk, and maximising data value. This is where Microsoft Purview steps in.
What is Microsoft Purview?
Microsoft Purview is a unified data governance solution that helps you understand, manage, and govern your data estate. By bringing together capabilities from data discovery and classification to risk management and compliance, Purview offers a holistic approach to data intelligence. For UK businesses navigating complex regulatory landscapes like GDPR and the need for robust cybersecurity, Purview is an indispensable tool.
4 key use cases of Microsoft Purview
Here are four key use cases illustrating how Microsoft Purview can transform your organisation:
- Achieving and Demonstrating Regulatory Compliance (e.g., GDPR, NIS2, DORA)
The ever-evolving regulatory landscape places immense pressure on businesses to ensure data privacy and security. Microsoft Purview provides a powerful framework to meet these obligations.
Purview’s automated data discovery and classification capabilities allow you to identify sensitive data (e.g., PII, financial information) across your entire estate, regardless of where it resides. You can then apply sensitivity labels and retention policies, ensuring data is handled according to regulatory requirements.
This proactive approach helps prevent data breaches, reduces the risk of non-compliance fines, and streamlines the audit process by providing clear visibility into your data’s lifecycle and controls. Compliance Manager within Purview offers actionable insights and a clear compliance score to track progress against various regulations.
- Proactive Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Insider Risk Management
Accidental or malicious data exfiltration poses a constant threat. Microsoft Purview empowers organisations to prevent sensitive data from leaving controlled environments.
Purview’s DLP policies can be configured to automatically detect and block the sharing of sensitive information via email, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and even endpoints (Windows and macOS devices). Furthermore, Insider Risk Management capabilities use behavioural analytics to identify suspicious activities by employees, contractors, or partners that might indicate data misuse or leakage.
This significantly reduces the risk of data breaches, intellectual property theft, and reputational damage, allowing your business to operate with greater confidence in its data security posture.
- Comprehensive Data Governance and Data Mapping
Many organisations struggle with a fragmented view of their data, making it difficult to understand what data they possess, where it’s stored, and who has access to it. Purview provides a unified solution for this.
The Microsoft Purview Data Map automatically scans, ingests, and maps metadata from diverse data sources – on-premises databases, multi-cloud storage, and SaaS applications. This creates a comprehensive, unified data catalogue that provides a clear overview of your data estate, including data lineage and classification.
This holistic view improves data discoverability for legitimate users, enhances data quality, and enables more informed decision-making. Data owners and stewards gain the insights needed to effectively manage and secure their data assets.
- Streamlined eDiscovery and Internal Investigations
Responding to legal requests, regulatory audits, or internal investigations can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. Microsoft Purview streamlines these critical tasks.
Purview’s eDiscovery capabilities allow you to efficiently identify, preserve, collect, review, and export electronically stored information (ESI) from across Microsoft 365 services (Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, etc.). Advanced features like content search, legal holds, and analytics significantly reduce the effort and cost associated with investigations.
This accelerates response times for legal and compliance requirements, reduces the burden on IT and legal teams, and ensures that all relevant data is defensible and accessible for investigations.
Purview is part of a suite of data protection and security solutions. We at Bridgeall help organisations use to help keep your business and data safe. To learn more about how Bridgeall could help you with Microsoft Purview, visit our Cyber Security services or contact us today.
