- Microsoft Purview centralizes data management, protection, and monitoring across cloud and on-premises environments.
- Allows you to apply automatic and custom sensitivity labels to comply with regulations and protect sensitive information.
- Its integration with Defender for Cloud Apps facilitates the monitoring, auditing and control of classified files in real time.
Microsoft Purview has become an essential tool for organizations looking to take control of their data in an increasingly distributed, regulated environment subject to external and internal threats. This solution not only offers data governance and protection capabilities but also integrates regulatory compliance, visibility, and control throughout the entire information lifecycle. If you're not sure where to start, here's a comprehensive guide, clearly explained and accessible, so you can take full advantage of Microsoft Purview, whether your business is small or has a complex infrastructure spread across multiple environments.
In today's world, where data flows across different platforms, clouds, and applications, having a unified view of what's happening with our information is critical. Microsoft Purview allows you to centralize the management, protection, and monitoring of your data., ensuring that you access them responsibly and in compliance with regulations, as well as protecting sensitive assets from threats and accidental or deliberate leaks.
What is Microsoft Purview and what is it used for?
Microsoft Purview is a comprehensive platform designed for large-scale data governance, protection, and management.It covers everything from creating data maps to classifying, protecting, and auditing an organization's entire information portfolio, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments. Its main objective is to provide visibility, security, and compliance in a single console, simplifying management and reducing risk.
With Microsoft Purview, you can address critical challenges such as data fragmentation, lack of control over sensitive information, and compliance with increasingly complex regulations. Its key features include:
- Data discovery and classification across your entire environment, including cloud services, databases, files and applications.
- Protection and control of confidential information through policies, labels, and encryption adaptable to the data lifecycle.
- Unified compliance management, allowing risks to be identified and solutions to be applied that guarantee compliance with relevant legislation.
- Governance of access and use of data to ensure that only those who should be able to view, modify or share valuable information.
Key elements of the Microsoft Purview platform
The platform integrates several modules and tools designed to work together and cover all the necessary areas of data management. Let's break them down so you have a clear idea of how you can use them in your organization.
Data governance in distributed environments
One of the great values of Microsoft Purview is to unify data management, regardless of where it is stored.: Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, SaaS services like OneDrive, SharePointPower BI, Amazon S3, SQL, Hive, and even local file systems. Thanks to its mapping engine, you can create an up-to-date representation of your entire information asset, automatically classifying data, visualizing lineage (origin and journey), and detecting potential risks of exposure or leakage.
This allows organizations to answer essential questions such as: Where is our sensitive data? Who is accessing it? What is it being used for? All with a centralized, easy-to-navigate interface.
Protection and labeling of sensitive data
Information protection is based on the use of customizable confidentiality labels and enforcement policies.These labels allow you to classify information according to sensitivity or regulatory requirements and, if necessary, apply encryption, access restrictions, and automatic alerts when data is manipulated outside of established conditions.
Additionally, labels can be applied automatically using rules defined by the administrator, detecting patterns in the data (e.g., credit card numbers, personal identifiers, etc.), or manually by authorized users. This facilitates consistent protection without relying exclusively on human input.
Solutions for compliance, auditing and risk management
Purview provides specific tools for analyze compliance with regulations (e.g., GDPR, ISO, HIPAA) through ongoing assessments and detailed reporting. This allows for identifying gaps, proposing corrective actions, and monitoring their implementation.
Its audit module is especially valuable, as it records all relevant actions on the data in Microsoft 365 and related services, facilitating rapid incident response, forensic investigations, and justification to regulatory bodies in the event of an inspection or legal dispute.
Centralized portal and user experience
From the Microsoft Purview unified portal You'll be able to access all features with intuitive, role-based navigation. The portal's new design focuses on simplicity, grouping modules such as governance, protection, and risk management so you can configure and monitor everything from a single location.
You'll be able to customize access based on each user's position or department, limiting actions to relevant areas of responsibility and enabling collaboration between IT, compliance, security, and operations teams.
How-To Guides: Configuring and Deploying Microsoft Purview
One of Purview's strengths is its step-by-step structure for configuring and deploying all its features. Depending on your company's needs, you can enable only the modules and workflows you need, from communications compliance to information protection and data lifecycle management.
Communication and internal risk management
The Communications Compliance and Internal Risk Management module is focused on detecting and mitigating threats that arise within the organization itself..
- Identify problematic behaviors such as verbal abuse, harassment, manipulation of sensitive information, or suspicious transactions.
- It enables automated response to risks of intellectual property loss, data leaks, code of conduct violations, or internal regulations.
With the available configuration guides, you'll learn how to define monitoring policies, configure alerts, and conduct detailed investigations, all while respecting privacy and legality.
Information protection and life cycle
Data lifecycle management is essential to prevent information from accumulating uncontrollably and without meaning. Microsoft Purview gives you the ability to set retention, archiving, and deletion policies., applying labels automatically or manually and ensuring that data is kept only There necessary, thus complying with internal and external guidelines.
You'll be able to import file plans in batches via CSV, apply retention policies to records, emails, and other content, and ensure information deletion occurs properly, minimizing risk and improving operational efficiency.
Audit and eDiscovery Solutions
In environments where traceability and event investigation are essential, Purview allows you to audit all actions on your data and simplifies the search for relevant information for legal or compliance processes..
- The integrated auditing solution records who accesses or manipulates data, when, and how.
- eDiscovery facilitates the search, retention, and delivery of electronic data in legal cases, covering services such as Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Microsoft 365 Groups, and more.
Integrating Microsoft Purview with other security solutions
A critical point that differentiates Purview from its competitors is its integration with other Microsoft security layers, especially with Defender for Cloud Apps. This integration allows
- Automatically apply sensitivity labels to files that meet specific criteria in the cloud.
- Centralize the monitoring of all classified documents in a single interface.
- Investigate incidents based on file classification.
- Establish policies that ensure proper management and protection of data in connected cloud applications.
When a label policy is published in Purview, Defender for Cloud Apps can inspect and label files in services such as Box, Google Workspace, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive. Each time a file is added or modified, its sensitivity level is assessed and the corresponding policy is applied, even with encryption capabilities if required.
Configure the integration step by step
Integrating both solutions is as simple as selecting the appropriate checkbox in the Defender for Cloud Apps configuration. From that point on, the platform will periodically review all files, automatically applying sensitivity labels. In addition, you can create specific policies, define governance actions (e.g., restrict downloads or share tagged files) and even trigger alerts when anomalous behavior is detected or the threshold for exposure to sensitive data is exceeded.
Aspects and limits of integration
There are nuances that should be taken into account to avoid misunderstandings or misuse of the tool:
- Password-protected files cannot be read or automatically tagged by Defender for Cloud Apps.
- Tags applied outside the managed environment may be recognized, but with some limitations on their modification or deletion.
- Empty files or those stored in protected libraries are not labelable by the solution.
- The scope of the tag must include at least files and emails to be recognized correctly.
Label Application and Management
You can apply sensitivity labels directly from the Defender for Cloud Apps interface to any file, view the label history, and take corrective action if necessary. You can also manually remove or update labels if the sensitivity or nature of the information changes.
Advanced directives allow you to:
- Automatically apply labels based on custom conditions (e.g., access level, organizational unit, file type, etc.).
- Set alerts and notifications to monitor for suspicious or unusual activity.
This level of granularity allows companies to tailor policies to their operational and compliance needs without losing flexibility or efficiency.
Case Study: How to Monitor and Control Data in the Cloud
With Microsoft Purview and Defender for Cloud Apps working together, you can build policies specific to real-world scenarios that affect businesses of all sizes. For example:
- Automatically detect externally shared files containing confidential informationSimply create a policy that filters all files in Box or any connected cloud apps that have been tagged as sensitive and are shared outside your domain. This way, you'll prevent accidental or uncontrolled leaks.
- Monitor the modification of sensitive data in critical areasYou can create policies to notify you when a labeled file is modified outside of a secure folder (for example, the customer data folder in SharePoint).
These capabilities help organizations maintain control, demonstrate compliance, and anticipate security breaches before they become a real threat.
Getting Started and Support
The first step to taking advantage of Purview is to access the portal using an administrator account. From there, quick setup wizards and detailed guides for each module are available. If you ever encounter technical difficulties, Microsoft provides a comprehensive support system to resolve issues and help you implement specific solutions based on your environment and industry.
Thanks to this comprehensive and customizable approach, Microsoft Purview is positioned as one of the most comprehensive tools for achieving secure, efficient data management aligned with today's data protection and compliance challenges.
This system facilitates the protection of digital assets, risk reduction, and compliance with legal obligations. By integrating all layers of security, governance, and compliance into a single dashboard, management is simplified, resources are optimized, and the likelihood of incidents or sanctions is significantly reduced. The ability to monitor, tag, and audit in real time is essential for any company that values its information assets and wants to maintain the trust of customers, employees, and regulators alike.
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