Elly Yates-Roberts |
Microsoft is to launch Microsoft Purview, a new set of solutions designed to help organisations govern, protect and manage their entire data estates.
The new brand family of solutions will combine the capabilities of the former Azure Purview and the Microsoft 365 Compliance portfolio to provide a unified offering for organisations. These features will include data governance from Microsoft Data and AI, along with compliance and risk management from Microsoft Security. Microsoft Purview will also be complemented by identity and access management, threat protection, cloud security, endpoint management and privacy management capabilities.
“Over the past two years, organisations have seen a massive increase in their digital footprint, leading to data fragmentation and growth across a multitude of applications, devices, and locations,” said Alym Rayani, general manager of compliance and privacy marketing. “It’s a big digital world for any organisation to try to manage. The unification of Microsoft’s data governance and compliance capabilities to Microsoft Purview reflects our belief that the world needs a simpler and more unified approach to data.”
To help organisations working across multiple clouds and on-premises platforms, Microsoft is extending its sensitive information type catalogue with more than 50 new classifiers to help identify sensitive data before it is shared. The company is also opening the preview of multi-stage retention in Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management (formerly Microsoft Information Governance), which automatically applies a new label when an item reaches the end of its retention period. Co-authoring of encrypted documents on mobile devices will now be enabled, allowing multiple users to work simultaneously on Microsoft 365 apps and documents with autosave.
Microsoft Purview’s capabilities will also be extended for macOS users with the general availability of Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention for macOS endpoints. Organisations will therefore be able to extend their insights from the solution to devices running macOS Catalina or higher.
The new solutions will also help to protect businesses as they move towards a hybrid work environment. Enhancements to the detection and investigation capabilities of Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management to help provide security teams with additional insights into rapidly changing workforces. Additional capabilities for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery will improve identification of relevant data in Microsoft Teams and help manage legal hold processes with new reporting functionalities.
New features will also be added to Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance, which helps to detect code of conduct violations. These will include expanded optical character recognition, machine learning model highlighting, reduced detection-to-investigation time, and step-by-step onboarding guidance. Microsoft has also now made continuous compliance assessments generally available in Microsoft Compliance Manager, allowing customers to act on over 150 recommendations across the Purview suite of solutions.
“A strong solution is built around strong principles,” said Rayani. “It’s designed to protect customers’ data, keep employees’ workplaces safe, and protect the business. At Microsoft, we don’t do these things just because they’re required, we do them because they’re right.”
Existing Microsoft 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance customers can view changes introduced by Microsoft Purview on the Microsoft Purview compliance portal, while Azure Purview customers can visit the Microsoft Purview governance portal.