In today's data-driven landscape, effective data governance is more crucial than ever. As organizations struggle with increasing data volumes and evolving regulatory requirements, there's a pressing need for comprehensive data governance tools. Microsoft Purview stands out as a cloud-based solution crafted to support these needs, offering an encompassing approach to data discovery, management, and governance. Today, Microsoft Purview brings together two complementary products: Risk and Compliance and Unified Data Governance. In this overview, the focus will be on the Unified Data Governance solution with the Microsoft Purview governance portal as a foundation.
Seamless Data Discovery and Cataloging
Central to the capabilities of Microsoft Purview is its Data Map. This tool thoroughly scans data from a multitude of sources, both within the Microsoft Azure ecosystem and external platforms. The metadata of these data assets is organized in the Data Map where it can be curated for discovery. The result is that organizations gain a 360-degree view of their data landscape.
Furthermore, Microsoft Purview enhances the data discovery process through its Business Glossary. Providing a space where business terms and definitions can be documented, the Business Glossary facilitates cohesive communication among distinct business and technical teams alike. As a result, the Data Catalog serves as a central repository, allowing users to seamlessly search and browse data assets, infusing the technical metadata with valuable business context. To further ease the curation of the metadata, workflows can be set up to manage change requests and approvals, preventing unintended changes.
Ensuring Compliance
In the face of strict regulations like GDPR, organizations need tools that demystify compliance. The Microsoft Purview governance portal integrates with the Compliance Portal, enabling the automatic assignment of sensitivity labels based on classifications. Through rule-based, automatic data classification – containing over 200 system classifications alongside custom options – you can identify important personal data inside your data estate.
Collaboration and Data Sharing
Microsoft Purview makes managing and sharing data straightforward and secure. Its Data Policies ensure that the right people get access to the data they need in an easy and controlled way. This includes access policies set by data owners for data consumers and IT teams to make sure everyone goes about their work without any unnecessary hurdles. Moreover, workflows can be set up so users can perform access requests themselves and launch an approval to the correct data owner. For Microsoft Azure resources, the access rights can also be granted automatically.
The Data Share functionality in Microsoft Purview allows you to share data inside and outside of your organization without physically moving it (to something like e.g., an FTP server) keeping things simple and secure.
Keep track of your catalog
With Data Estate Insights the tool provides deeper insights into the catalog data. This solution offers a set of pre-built reports, providing interesting insights into data curation and usage, data estate health, and ownership. Additionally, it facilitates the identification of sensitive data, thereby supporting businesses with tracking their exposure to risk and enabling compliance.
Conclusion
In today's data-driven landscape, Microsoft Purview provides organizations with a robust, cloud-based solution for data governance. By bringing together powerful data management, solid compliance support, and efficient team collaboration features, it offers businesses a well-rounded solution to navigate today’s data management challenges. As data continues to become more central to decision-making, the importance of Microsoft Purview in ensuring it is used safely and effectively cannot be overstated.
More information is available at the Microsoft website https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/purview.
Contact us for more information on our Data Governance Competence Centre.