News

Microsoft Purview Rebrand Promises Unified Data Governance and Compliance

• By Kurt Mackie
• 04/19/2022

"Microsoft Purview" is new product branding announced on Tuesday by Microsoft, which combines the former Azure Purview data governance service with various Microsoft 365 compliance solutions.

The "new" Microsoft Purview service was described as the "unification of Microsoft's data governance and compliance capabilities." The service provides risk and compliance protections, along with so-called "unified data governance" solutions.

Microsoft illustrated this concept in the following diagram, which also shows the associated Microsoft 365 compliance services that got rebranded:

Single Solution Argument
In the announcement, Microsoft argued that organizations have had to address remote workforces, and have cobbled together various tools to protect data under such conditions. With the new Microsoft Purview, Microsoft's own set of compliance tools are being brought together to "help you govern, protect and manage your entire data estate."

The new Microsoft Purview enables visibility and security for data. It safeguards "sensitive data across clouds, apps and endpoints." Management for regulatory compliance is enabled as well, per the announcement.

"Enabling an effective Zero Trust approach requires the ability to govern, protect, and understand data coming from an ever-widening array of endpoints," Microsoft argued.

New Capabilities
Microsoft Purview integrates with some newly added Microsoft 365 compliance solutions capabilities.

The service now integrates with a Data Loss Prevention service for macOS devices. Microsoft announced the "general availability" commercial release of "Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention for macOS endpoints," which adds protections to sensitive files on devices running macOS Catalina or higher. Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention was formerly known as "Microsoft 365 Data Loss Prevention."

Microsoft is previewing a new ability for Microsoft 365 applications and services users to coauthor using Microsoft Information Protection-encrypted documents on Android and iOS mobile devices. The document coauthoring capability applies to Microsoft 365 applications (such as Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word) and services (namely Exchange, Teams and SharePoint).

Microsoft is also previewing next month a "multistage" data retention setting in Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management (formerly called "Microsoft Information Governance"). Previously, settings could just trigger a review at the end of a data retention period. However, now a new label can be applied to the data at the end of a retention period, which can invoke a new retention or deletion setting, Microsoft explained in this announcement.

Microsoft also announced that it has expanded its sensitive information types, adding "more than 50 new classifiers" that are at the general availability release stage. The new classifiers are available in Microsoft Priva, Microsoft's data privacy management solution. They are also available in a number of Microsoft Purview solutions, namely "Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Information Protection (i.e., auto-labeling), Data Lifecycle Management, Insider Risk Management, Records Management, eDiscovery Premium, and Exact Data Match." The 50 new classifiers were added to more than 200 sensitive information types already in effect.

New additions to other Microsoft 365 compliance tools were described as well, including updates to Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management, Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Premium edition), Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance and Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager.

Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager now provides more than 150 recommendations across Microsoft solutions. This enhancement is a "continuous compliance assessments" addition that has reached general availability.