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Unlocking Data Security with Microsoft Purview Information Protection

In today’s interconnected digital landscape, protecting sensitive information is paramount. As a Senior Technical Advisor with over 16 years of experience, I’ve witnessed first-hand the critical role data security plays in organizational success. Enter Microsoft Purview Information Protection—your ally in the battle against data breaches, leaks, and unauthorized access.

Join me on this journey as we unravel the complexities and celebrate the innovations that shape our digital lives.

My passion lies in security and compliance. As we navigate the digital landscape, these topics are more critical than ever. In my upcoming blogs, I’ll delve into:

Microsoft Purview Information Protection, a powerful suite of capabilities designed to safeguard sensitive data across your organization. Whether it’s data at rest, in transit, or on endpoints, these tools empower you to know your data, protect it, govern your data, and prevent data loss

Before we delve into the offerings under Purview information protection, let’s see what are the current challenges faced by the organizations.

Data is exploding.

• IDC forecasts that by 2025, the global datasphere will grow to 163 zettabytes (ZB). 1000 TB is 1 Petabyte, 1 Zettabyte is 1,000,000 Petabytes.
• The type of data continue to evolve too. The organizations primarily used to deal with data such as emails and documents in the past. Now they are also dealing with instant messages, video files, images etc.
• With the increase in data and the data types the number of regulations that an organization must comply with is also increasing like GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA etc.

Current challenges for the organizations.

Data Management Challenges:

·       Organizations face difficulties in managing their data effectively.

·       Lack of information about risks poses a significant challenge.

Changing work patters:

·       People now work in diverse ways, including cross-boundary data creation and sharing.

·       Protecting data has become more complex due to these new work patters.

Expanded Protection Scope:

·       Beyond on-premises environments, data protection is necessary for:

o   Devices

o   SaaS applications

o   Cloud Services

         Risk Profile Impact:

·       Without an information protection and governance strategy, your risk profile may increase

Most common scenario  

·       Data exfiltration

Data exfiltration is an attack whereby an internal or external actor completes an unauthorized data transfer of sensitive corporate resources. The exfiltration of sensitive corporate resources is often accomplished due to a lack of appropriate authentication and authorization controls.

Common actors for data exfiltration are Malicious Insiders, Former Employees, Careless Insiders, Privileged users etc.

Example of data exfiltration

Before you define an information and protection strategy it’s important to check if your organization has clear understanding of the following. 

Data Location Awareness

• Understand where your business-critical and sensitive data resides. Just trying to identify the data landscape can be a huge task itself. 

Data Control

• Maintain control over data as it move within and outside the organization
• Consider scenarios like sharing data with customers, partners, or copying it to mobile devices.

Unified Solutions

• Do you use multiple solutions to classify, label, and protect sensitive data? many organizations do, which can create challenges in identifying coverage gaps.

Microsoft’s approach to information protection and governance is centered around four principles:

1. Know Your Data:

• Understand your data landscape.
• Identify important data across your hybrid environment.

2. Protect Your Data:

Apply flexible protection actions, including:

• Encryption
• Access restrictions
• Visual markings

3. Prevent Data Loss:

• Detect risky behaviour.
• Prevent accidental oversharing of sensitive information.

4) Govern Your Data:

• Automatically retain, delete, and store data and records in a compliant manner.

Knowing your data, protecting your data, preventing data loss, and governing your data are outcomes powered and enriched by Microsoft’s intelligent platform, which delivers:

Knowing Your Data: A common approach to classification, regardless of data location.

Protecting Your Data: Unified policy configuration and management experience for IT.

Preventing Data Loss: Analytics dashboard to monitor and remediate issues.

Governing Your Data: APIs enabling partners to extend information protection and governance capabilities to their own apps and services.