Achieving information compliance with Microsoft Purview

Microsoft recently bundled all of its Microsoft 365-related data security and compliance features and functions under one brand name: Purview. At Xillio, we know how critical it can be for some companies and organizations to ensure and prove that important business information is safeguarded from data loss and (often inadvertent) manipulations.

With the advance of cloud hosting this has become even more important – remote control of data security and compliance requires some powerful functions to work effectively. Gradually, these have been introduced into the Microsoft 365 platform, with its current bundling marking the fact that we can speak of a very complete offering, meeting even the strictest of information security and compliance demands.

What is Microsoft Purview?

Purview consists of a centralized function to govern all information managed through the Microsoft 365 platform from a security and compliance perspective. The Compliance Center is provided as a one-stop place to control all compliance features across the different Microsoft 365 applications and data stores, including the likes of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Yammer, Exchange, and OneDrive. It shares and complements the data and application security functions of Microsoft Azure.

Through the Compliance Center, the following functions may be addressed:

Compliance overview dashboard – offering compound insights into your overall information compliance score, detailed assessments, and actionable suggestions for improvement
Communication compliance – using machine learning features and collaborative workflows to find, track, and follow on potential compliance breaches regarding codes of conduct and regulatory policies in emails and messages across the different communication channels (email, chat) hosted on Microsoft 365 and even beyond (e.g. Slack)
eDiscovery: giving your Legal department the means to intelligently search for all information relevant to a legal case, bundle and use it, and apply so-called legal holds to it, preventing it from accidental or deliberate deletion until a case is closed
Information protection: allowing for the labeling of critical content for sensitivity (e.g. from regulatory, IP protection, or corporate ethics perspective) and applying data security policies to labeled content
Insider risk management: pro-actively detect potential data leaks or IP theft and investigate alerts, resulting in appropriate actions when needed – all from within the platform
Records management: enabling the labeling of information according to a file plan, across all sources of information in the platform. This allows for the classification of critical business information from a legal, regulatory, or business perspective for long-term preservation and deletion. The deletion process may be governed, by supplying configurable review stages of data and content to be deleted
Privacy risk management and subject requests: This feature has recently been branded separately as ‘Priva’, due to its specific nature and usage in the organization. It offers functionality based on AI detection and advanced search to track privacy-sensitive information and answer so-called subject requests by tracking all information related to a single subject and allowing for its bundled export.

Getting started with Microsoft Purview

Together, and by the integration with Microsoft Azure data security features, the Purview functions ensure a very robust and complete platform-wide coverage of information compliance. Of course, it takes planning and education of key stakeholders to enable successful implementation and adoption.

But most importantly: for Purview to do its good work, you need to have most of your content inside of Microsoft 365. Regarding this content these challenges are common:

Lots of content in different places

You have a lot of content, distributed over numerous repositories also outside of Microsoft 365. You have countless processes, workflows and tools built around this content.

Content ownership is unclear

In order for Purview to deliver on its value, the ownership on data and content needs to be clear. Often, the processes that they are connected to can tell a lot about ownership already.

As a starting point, the following may be assessed:

To make an inventory of your content repositories, what they contain, and what is the information risk pertaining to the content and data residing there. Xillio can help, if needed with special content analysis tooling, to build a heatmap
Gather and assess all relevant policies that provide the formal requirements for implementation. If you have e.g. a retention policy and file plan already in place (e.g. for paper documents), you can start labeling existing information quite quickly
Think about your current governance organization and what is needed to get it up to speed with the capabilities of the Purview product. Have you centralized this function or is it delegated across the organization? Getting the governance right is critical for the effectiveness of applying Purview to your information

Are you uncertain about the impact of implementing Microsoft Purview and how you can fully utilize its potential? Do you want to know how to integrate Microsoft information governance controls and Purview capabilities? Do you have questions about migrating your content to Microsoft 365, such as “Do I need to migrate immediately, or can I do it in a phased manner?”

Want to know more about implementing automated records management using Microsoft Purview Records Management?

We have curated a five-part course providing a step-by-step guide on how to implement automated records management using Microsoft Purview Records Management. The course addresses all the critical components of professional records management and shows how to automate these using the Microsoft Purview Records Management product in a very detailed manner.

All kinds of practical attention points are discussed to ensure your implementation is a success. From hands-on experience with multiple projects, this course will help you scope and plan your Purview RM implementation and avoid a lot of possible pitfalls.

Achieving information compliance with Microsoft Purview

Define Your Microsoft Purview Roadmap

How to govern your content and data for information compliance with Microsoft

What is Microsoft Purview?

We are happy to offer you our complimentary eBook about Microsoft Purview-based information compliance

Want to share a brief about Purview within your organization? View our product summary ⇒

Getting started with Microsoft Purview

Lots of content in different places

Content ownership is unclear

Xillio and Microsoft Purview

Want to know more about implementing automated records management using Microsoft Purview Records Management?

Define Microsoft Purview Roadmap

Xillio

Leave a message