Building an Effective Data Governance Strategy with Microsoft Purview

Step 1: Develop a Unified Map of Your Business Data

Microsoft Purview Data Map enables organisations to efficiently discover, govern, and utalise their data. It collects metadata from analytics tools, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and operational systems across hybrid, on-premises, and multi-cloud environments.

With its in-built capabilities, the data map automatically scans and classifies an organisations data to keep information up to date. Additionally, it supports seamless integration with existing data catalogues and systems through Apache Atlas APIs. This integration reflects Microsoft’s collaborative effort with the open-source community, ensuring an accessible and straightforward experience for adopting and leveraging Microsoft Purview.

Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) offers centralised visibility and
contextual insights from across Microsoft Purview’s data security solutions, empowering organisations to
manage their data security posture more effectively. By collecting information from Microsoft Purview
Information Protection, Insider Risk Management and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and bringing it into one place, DSPM’s contextual insights help data security teams identify possible labelling and policy gaps and detect unusual patterns and activities that might signal potential risks. DSPM insights is even able to provide visibility into the location and types of sensitive data, as well as the common channels for data exfiltration. The centralised view that DSPM provides data security teams with empowers them to accelerate investigations and uncover hidden data risks that could have been more easily overlooked in isolated views, helping them uncover opportunities to adapt and strengthen their data security program.

A benefit of DSPM is that Data security teams will be able to conduct unified analyses across data, users, and activities, using DSPM as a vital starting point to gain insights into the organisation’s data environment, even before implementing classifications or policies.

When the organisation has access to Security Copilot, Data Security Analytics will then provide generative AI powered insights in natural language as well as a suggested path for investigation. Users will be able to explore the data landscape in depth, examining multiple data sets, alerts, users and activities. This feature enhances data protection by offering policy recommendations to mitigate potential risks and conducting data oversharing assessments. These assessments identify at-risk data by scanning for sensitive information types and pinpointing locations with potential oversharing based on user access patterns. The tool recommends protecting sensitive data by configuring auto-labelling policies or default labels for items within over-permissioned sites. Additionally, it provides guidance on fixing permissions through auto-labelling, Restricted Content Discovery, and Access Review in SharePoint Advanced Management.

This capability enhances data security expertise by centralising insights and guiding investigations,
streamlining onboarding for new team members, and increasing efficiency for experienced security teams.

Step 2: Enable Effortless Data Discovery and Maximise its Value

The Microsoft Purview Unified Catalogue tackles this challenge by empowering data stewards and owners to curate data assets for governed usage. Through a well-organised and accessible catalogue, it facilitates efficient discovery and utilisation of data products. This governance solution enhances visibility, fosters data confidence, and promotes responsible innovation, ultimately boosting business value in the AI-driven landscape.

Microsoft Purview also offers deeper data quality support, through a data quality scan engine for big
data platforms, including Microsoft Fabric, Databricks Unity Catalog, Snowflake, Google Big Query, and
Amazon S3, to support open standard file and table formats. This scan engine enables businesses
to centrally perform richer data quality management across diverse data assets directly within the Purview
Unified Catalog. It also supports a modern, federated data governance approach, regardless of where the
data is stored.

Data stewards can also benefit from the Microsoft Purview Analytics in OneLake feature to extract
tenant-specific metadata from the Purview Unified Catalog and publish it to OneLake, further enhancing
an organisation’s data quality management efforts. This capability enables deeper data quality and
lineage investigations using the advanced features of Power BI within Microsoft Fabric.

Step 3: Establish Policies to Access, Move, and Share Data

Automated access policies streamline data access across an organisation, allowing employees to easily retrieve the information they need while ensuring it remains secure.

With Microsoft Purview Data Policy, organisations can define and enforce tailored policies for accessing, moving, or sharing data across various sources. These policies can be customised based on user roles – such as DevOps, data owners, or other self-service users – ensuring that access it both efficient and appropriately managed. This approach balances accessibility with robust data protection, supporting secure and seamless operations.