Microsoft Purview Data Governance Reviews

Our goal was to provide insights into the latest data entries, implement governance measures, identify and classify sensitive data, and address specific business use cases. The primary use cases revolved around establishing a comprehensive data lineage, accompanied by pertinent metadata. This was primarily aimed at providing a business-centric dashboard, enabling stakeholders to visualize how data moves from one point to another and ultimately reaches the target. 

In my experience, I've utilized it on Windows machines with Blackfish without encountering any issues.

The dashboard offers insights into the nature of the data, and the transformations occurring between different columns, and allows for traceability to identify any issues that may arise. These use cases have proven highly beneficial not only for business analysis but also for support activities. For instance, it aids support personnel in quickly identifying issues such as missing data or anomalies, streamlining the troubleshooting process for efficient problem resolution.

Purview facilitates data management across diverse cloud and platform environments, encompassing AWS and GCP. However, my experience has been exclusively with Azure. Given that my ecosystem operates within Azure, both the source and target activities are conducted seamlessly within the Azure framework. The integration is smooth since Microsoft Purview is inherently designed for Microsoft components, making it effortless to establish connections and retrieve the required data. I haven't employed it for other sources or alternative cloud systems.

The importance of Purview lies in its careful consideration of critical global regulations. As a data governance solution, it plays a crucial role in business development processes. Given the potentially sensitive nature of incoming data, proper classification is essential to ensure specialized treatment. This facilitates easy access for subsequent activities such as metadata modifications or updates, providing sufficient information for comprehension by business personnel. The tool proves beneficial for data quality officers, enabling them to monitor data and detect any discrepancies, empowering them to take necessary actions. In the realm of the cloud, Purview emerges as a highly valuable data governance solution.

The integration of Microsoft Purview has significantly reduced the need for multiple solutions to interact within our company. This reduction not only streamlines processes but also saves time. For example, when a problem arises, understanding, identifying, and resolving it becomes much easier compared to the traditional approach of tracing through multiple systems for the root cause. With Microsoft Purview, the identification process is simplified, leading to potential savings in support efforts. Business stakeholders also benefit by gaining more visibility into how data flows through the system and understanding the metadata information without relying heavily on support or technical personnel. This autonomy enhances their ability to assess and comprehend the situation independently.

I haven't implemented it to enhance response time for insider threats by applying security measures. However, the tool does provide visibility into the movement of data, allowing the data control officer to monitor and classify alarms promptly. In the event of an alert, appropriate actions can be taken accordingly.

Efforts have significantly diminished, and this reduction is directly proportional to cost savings. As a technical person involved in both solution development and support processes, I've observed a reduction of more than fifty percent. The turnaround time for issue resolution has notably decreased. Previously, it took others a considerable amount of time to identify the root cause, but with Microsoft Purview, pinpointing issues and finding solutions has become much more efficient.

It has had a significant impact on our capacity to maintain compliance. As a data governance solution, it offers features essential for ensuring that compliance requirements are thoroughly met, and data processing aligns with regulatory standards.

The user interface is highly intuitive and user-friendly.

I appreciate it because it provides a unified solution. Everything can be managed in one place, from scanning sources to making assets available. The access includes comprehensive metadata information, presented in a non-technical manner for easy comprehension of the asset's nature. The visualization it offers is quite clear. Additionally, it creates a lineage based on data processing, allowing for workflow authorization and control over metadata modifications or other activities. 

It caters to the entire micro-ecosystem, providing connectivity and seamless data flow. It allows for scanning, asset discovery, and data coverage. While there are some existing limitations, it's important to note that the tool is continuously evolving. I believe it holds great potential and will become an excellent resource for development in the future.

Purview's data connector platform is designed to facilitate ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources. I've personally applied this feature to one of our sources, an Oracle database. Specifically, we utilized ADA for data permissions and seamlessly integrated it with the Azure Data Factory pipeline. This automated the connection to Oracle, enabling the setup of data extraction and loading processes. Overall, it proved to be a valuable and effective feature.

Enhancing the tool's capability to connect to multiple sources would be valuable. Also, when data is transformed in other systems, the tool should capture the relevant metadata and generate lineage for those systems as well. Thirdly, addressing limitations, such as relying on Apache Atlas for mitigation, should be handled within the Microsoft tool itself rather than external dependencies like Apache Atlas.

I have been using it for approximately six months.

The stability is satisfactory, and I would give it a rating of eight out of ten.

I have utilized it in a cloud environment, and scalability is assured.

I am content with technical support, but for various inquiries, the responses often indicate that the feature is either not available or still in a previous state. I would rate it eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. Even individuals with less technical expertise can do it.

Deployment spanned a week and involved six different individuals.

Maintenance becomes necessary when leveraging external APIs and tools, especially concerning access management. However, once the initial setup using MS Purview is complete, ongoing maintenance is minimal. Automation takes over with continuous scanning, automatic data classification, and sensitivity labeling. Workflows can be established and utilized for an extended period, reducing the need for frequent maintenance.

I consider it cost-efficient because of the metrics it provides. With each scan being incremental, avoiding redundant scans of the same object, the tool offers a way to manage costs effectively.

We didn't extensively evaluate other options because Microsoft Purview successfully met the requirements for the specific tasks at hand. However, during implementation, I became aware of more mature tools available in the market that might offer greater capabilities. It seems that Microsoft Purview is still evolving compared to these more established alternatives.

In my scenario, I encountered difficulty connecting to a file system database, especially when it was located on a different server. Additionally, when working with an in-house solution like Azure Data Factory, while Microsoft Purview can successfully bring metrics to tables as assets, it faces limitations in identifying the leading use of those assets. For instance, a database solution handling ETL activities may not seamlessly provide insights into the transformations, sources, immediate obligations, and final targets associated with a specific asset, making it challenging to track its usage directly within Microsoft Purview.

I would strongly recommend Microsoft Purview when utilizing solutions within the Microsoft ecosystem, such as Data Factory, various applications, and databases.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten because several features are still in a preliminary state. Given that it is in preview, it may not be as stable or fully functional yet. Also, the absence of data quality and data profiling mechanisms contributes to this rating.

The main use case is DLP, for alerts and insider risk management.

It is very important for our organization because ours is a very data-heavy organization. We process a lot of data on a daily basis, and we need to check where the data is coming from, how it is being classified, where it is being sent, and whether it is being used by the intended user. We need all the security controls.

We have clarity and visibility at a granular level. We can check data at rest or in transit—where data is coming from and where it is going—on-premises as well as in cloud solutions. That's how it is helpful.

The attack surface has been reduced significantly. Earlier, we didn't have any visibility into it.Now, we review every log to know where data is coming from and where it is going, as well as who is handling it. And all our employees also know that if they are doing anything mischievous, someone is watching them.

In terms of time saved, we write a policy, get an alert, and work on it. It has reduced a lot of human intervention while checking all the logs. It gives us the log source that we can check directly.

The best part is that I can create classifications per my requirements. I use it to classify multiple platforms like AWS, GCP, Azure, and different file sharing systems.

I also like the auto-labeling and the encryption of data when it is being sent out of the organization.

We also need complete coverage for every device that is connecting in our environment, so it's important that Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices.

We just started using Purview DLP for macOS endpoints. We deployed it and
we are fine-tuning the policies. The macOS support is a very important factor because most of the teams handle data. We need to check whether they are sending any source code and how they are handling the data. We need to know whether they are using a key management system to handle secrets.

The fact that Purview was built to account for regulations around the world is important for us. It has to keep updated regarding all regulations because our users are across the globe. If we don't know the regulation data, retention policies, and other policies regarding the data, we may not be in compliance with those policies, and our company will have to pay a hefty fine.

I have been using Microsoft Purview for about two years.

It is a stable product. The stability is an eight out of 10.

Support should be improved in the form of good documentation and video lessons where a person can check things out. There is a community, but it takes a lot of time if we want to get an answer to a question. There should be an easy-to-reach place where, if you're stuck, the support system is there.

Neutral

The deployment was straightforward. We got help from Microsoft support's FastTrack. They helped us deploy it.

As for maintenance, we have to update the policies.

Overall, the only problem is the support system, which is a bit costly. But the product is good.

Our process for potential policy violations is to first check whether something is a true positive or a false positive; we check the document that is being sent. We then check it from our team's side, the responder's side, and then we check it with the compliance team. We look at the policies that have been violated and also check the business use case where something is being sent outside the organization. It's a manual effort for one of our teams.

As for educating users on how to best handle sensitive data, that is done by our compliance team. They do awareness training for our end users and send them awareness emails as well as monthly connections where they give them awareness information about how to handle sensitive data.

We are only using Purview for DLP on the incident-response side and for data protection. So I'm not sure whether it has reduced the number of solutions in the stack we are using, but it is very useful for us.

And although I'm not involved with the compliance side, we can check the compliance dashboard to deal with compliance-related issues. We have a dedicated team that checks it.

We use the platform to comply with regulations, and our specific use cases are information protection, information governance, data loss prevention, and insider risk mitigation.

The information protection and data loss prevention functions help our end users be fully aware of the sensitivity of certain information. From a management and CISO perspective, they have insight into where sensitive data is stored and whether we are required by law to delete it after a certain period. That's an invaluable overview of the situation, so our users are more aware, and Purview took our information governance to the next level. It also supports our certifications because it helps us comply with regulations, including ISO/IEC 27001, which are essential to our functioning.

The solution increased visibility into our estate; we had a problem with GDPR-related personal information stored in our environment, which we didn't have any insight into. When we used some of Purview's data governance, data lifecycle management, and content search features, we could rapidly go after that information and resolve compliance issues. The tool also provides management with much better oversight of our stored data.  

Purview enables us to show our compliance in real-time and supports it via the compliance manager and compliance score. The assessment templates within the latter allow us to provide an overview of what we have done within the Microsoft 365 and Dynamics environments to our auditors, which is very handy. We're an ISO-certified company, amongst others. In meetings with compliance regulators, we can show that we're using information protection, DLP, data governance, and data lifecycle management functions to comply with regulations fully. The solution dramatically speeds up the process of talking with external auditors. 

Purview saves us time and money. We're an information-intensive organization; seeing where our sensitive information is stored is a significant time-saver. In addition, showing we're safeguarding that data also saves us a great deal of time. From an efficiency standpoint, AI and auto-classification of information is another big time-saver, as the staff members working for our clients don't want to spend time considering how long data needs to be stored, whether it should be archived, how sensitive it is and so on. I can't quantify exactly how much, but all of the above reasons save us a significant amount of time and money.

The data classification part of the solution is excellent, especially as it gives us an insight into our sensitive data within Microsoft 365. 

Data loss prevention is an extremely useful feature. 

The built-in information protection function is another that stands out. 

Purview delivering data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments, including AWS and GCP, is becoming increasingly important. It's a relatively new functionality, and I see the importance of it growing even more over the coming years. This kind of functionality is highly appreciated for organizations operating a multi-cloud environment. 

It's very important to us that Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices and data in other SaaS apps. From information protection and data loss prevention perspectives, information is accessed using many different devices, and extending that protection to iOS and Android is a must-have for any platform.   

The product's natively integrated compliance across Azure, Dynamics 365, and Office 365 is essential. The ability to classify information across workloads, and have a holistic view over our entire data estate where sensitive information is stored and handled, is excellent, especially from a CISO perspective. This is a capability we didn't previously have. Having that overview of where data is stored, plus the multi-platform/multi-cloud approach is the future for data classification and information protection. Wherever our data is stored, we have an overview of which is sensitive and which isn't. 

I greatly appreciate that Purview was built considering critical regulations worldwide, especially the international standards within the compliance manager. There are ISO and NIST standards, ideal for larger countries such as the USA and extensive international organizations.  

We use Purview for data loss prevention (DLP), and we're confident that we can detect and remediate policy violations. Microsoft improved its solution with recent additions, including advanced conditions, and the product is coming of age. The DLP is reaching a maturity level where we can confidently compare it with competitors like Symantec. It goes beyond DLP on emails, documents, on-premise, and endpoints; governmental organizations especially need to detect if sensitive information is being handled on devices. In this respect, Purview offers comprehensive protection.  

Used correctly, Purview is essential in staying on top of compliance. One of the best features in this regard is the solution's compliance manager, which helps us effectively comply with all the regulations. Many organizations should start using the platform because it will keep them on top of their compliance stances, and Microsoft periodically updates the assessments. We must be aware of updates and changes, as we can miss them if we do not pay attention. We can't just run the solution, walk away, and think we're compliant; it requires some monitoring of the developments from a roadmap perspective.   

Microsoft is doing an excellent job improving the platform, and they have a lot coming out shortly. However, the licensing around compliance could be much more transparent; it isn't clear for many organizations what kind of license they need to use, whether that's E5, E5 compliance, an information protection license, user-based, or platform-based. More information here would be a welcome improvement.

Blueprints and landing zones like we have in Azure would be great to see in Purview. The solution could offer a baseline or blueprint of recommended settings for compliance regulations such as GDPR and ISO, which could be applied with a simple switch in the options. 

Some dashboard centralization, like one overview dashboard instead of many loosely connected ones, could be a good improvement.

We must build our own assessments to comply with Dutch regulations, a mix of international and EU standards, as they aren't native to the solution. Many of our clients in the Netherlands require adherence to Dutch regulations, and as well as Purview covers the international aspect, the Dutch side is covered less than we would like.

There's room for improvement regarding Purview's data loss prevention for educating users on how best to handle sensitive data. Microsoft is working on improving the policy tips. Still, from a user's perspective, I want to see more information in the case of a policy violation, such as context or details on why a specific rule is triggered. There are ways to tweak the DLP options, but a significant improvement would be real-time notifications when working on an email or message within Teams, for example. DLP is only triggered when sending or saving, so real-time notifications would be great. The basic functionality is there, but there's room for improvement. 

We've been using Purview for around a year since Microsoft changed the name, but we've used the functionality within Purview for five to ten years.

We haven't had much experience with customer support as we didn't encounter many problems. However, the response is usually rapid, and the expertise depends on the technical knowledge of the agent we speak to.

Neutral

We didn't use different solutions, but some of our clients did and still do, mostly DLP and data classification platforms. The trend is that more have been moving to Purview because many are already paying for it within their licenses and not using it. We're an IT company focusing on Microsoft technology, so we went straight for Purview.

My colleague carried out the initial setup, and I'm primarily involved in deploying the solution's functions to our clients. Setup requires some planning, a discussion with the stakeholders, and a good sense of the data, but it's mostly very straightforward from an admin's perspective.

Our use case is mainly to do with GDPR-related data, and being able to get an overview of that information and act on it led to a speedy return on investment for us. Other organizations in the Netherlands bound by specific government regulations will also see a quick return on their investment when they discover they can classify their information and comply with regulations.

Aside from the complexity of the pricing model, the price itself is realistic. Features like AI components and automatic classification require additional licenses. Still, anyone can start using Purview with a basic E3 license if they're using Microsoft 365 and grow with additional licenses as needed. Overall, we're satisfied with the price.

With the way information is being used and the growth of data, the need for additional licenses for auto-classification etc., will become more and more apparent. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft incorporated those into the basic license in the future.

I rate the solution eight out of ten. 

Regarding Purview's data connector platform for supporting ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources, I have yet to work with it much. In highly regulated environments such as government organizations, it's very relevant, but I have yet to see it used much. The main reason is that the data connector platform is a relatively unknown component within the solution. It has its merits, but the use cases are limited.

If this were a year ago, I would have said the solution is getting there but hasn't reached maturity. However, Purview is now a very comprehensive solution; with all the enhancements, it's one of the best products available.

As Purview reached a maturity level where it could compete with third-party DLP solutions, some of our clients were able to move away from specific endpoint DLP products like Symantec DLP. Going with Purview also allowed these clients to fully leverage their existing licenses within Microsoft 365 and simplify their data governance. It provides a holistic view of the data estate, enables Defender for Cloud in Azure, and offers an integrated overview in one pane of glass.

Regarding automation, we use some limited functions using the solution's trainable classifiers and auto-classification of information. This notifies the user when working with certain kinds of sensitive data, GDPR and otherwise, so we use some basic AI functions within the platform.  

We're not currently using the product for insider risk management. Still, we are in the process of looking into implementing those features and how we could leverage them within our environment.

We have got all kinds of things to include in it. Specifically, we are looking at the data classification piece and the data protection piece that goes into it. Those are the two immediate cases. We have got ECIF partners helping us with it, and Microsoft is heavily involved. These are the two initial ones, but as we continue to expand, we are going to bring more functionality under the purview of Purview. Those are the broader use cases right now, but the idea behind it is to simplify the landscape. 

The reason why we made the decision to go with E5 and Purview is that Microsoft's technology stack has now caught up with the rest of the industry. Our preference is to keep it all in one technology stack so that it makes things simpler to connect and maintain. Previously, we had a collection of a few different applications. We want to offset that purely from the complexity, cost, and technical debt standpoint, and we are invested with Microsoft. We like their technologies, and that is why we found the match. We ran the assessments, and there are still some things that are not quite there. We are hoping by the time our program gets to implement them, they are going to be ready. They are going to fulfill our requirements.

Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments, including AWS and GCP, which is extremely important. We are primarily a Microsoft Azure house. We have taken that leap with them. We are a strategic framework partner, and we are proud of it. We are proud of the relationship, and we are growing within that framework. The footprint eventually has to mature to a multi-cloud capability. Anything that we do in the multi-cloud framework, if it cannot be addressed with the existing data protection toolset, it would be, at a minimum, frustrating. In the worst case, it would be a significant rebuild of our landscape. We would be taking a step back in time because of the fragmentation that we are doing today.

It is extremely important that Purview was built taking into account critical regulations from around the world. There are different PII regulations, and there are specific regulations that are applicable to the utility business. Different countries have different data residency requirements. Can Purview help with that? That is a little bit of a long shot when it comes to expectations, but all of those pieces would help us because otherwise, we would have to build it from the ground. That was an expectation that I shared with the Microsoft team, and they brought specialists to the table, but from an automation standpoint, we are still pretty far away from that preferred goal.

We use Purview for data loss protection, but it is too early to assess Purview data loss protection for remediating policy violations. We are very hopeful about how we are going to set this up because it all depends on how you set up the policies. There is a lot of learning. We are going to set up the initial typesets, and then we are going to build on them as we go along, but I believe that everything that we need is there.

Purview has not affected the visibility we have into our estate because we have not quite reached that design aspect. We have not gone to that level of detail because we are still tinkering with a few other third-party products for visibility across our estate. It is an insightful question, but we have not quite thought it through.

Purview has not yet saved us money and time. It has cost us money to subscribe, so it has not saved us. There is a business case behind it where we do believe there is an offset of the third-party products, but the execution is going to determine how much of that projection we can actually meet. That is one piece of it. From a time standpoint, it is a productivity play. As we get more conversant with the platform or as our folks get more conversant with the platform, I believe this is going to become a lot easier for us to work with than some of our other products. Time will tell, but I believe this can get us there. Currently, we are in that early phase of understanding it, getting the structure built around it, and scaling our skillsets up, and then we can start talking about how we squeeze this and get better from productivity and other standpoints.

Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices, and data in other SaaS apps. Its connectivity to Android devices is not so important to us, but with all other devices, it is important. One of our biggest problems with Microsoft solutions is their closed-ended ecosystem approach not just with InfoSec solutions but also with some of the connectivity capabilities. It is very inspiring to hear them talk about fabric across the ecosystem boundaries. We hope to see more and more of that because if we are going to include what we have from Microsoft as our primary solution, it should replace the capabilities that are brought by other ecosystem-agnostic solutions.

It is pretty early, but the decision to go with this investment was largely driven by the simplification of our information security technology management stack. That is the primary objective. Once you simplify and you have a connected structure, it allows for faster adoption there. It also gives us additional capabilities as we go on using the technology that we are familiar with, and we do not have to depend on outside parties to come in and tell us how to do certain things. Obviously, as new features are rolled out, it is good to know and hear from Microsoft. In some cases, they are very helpful in getting them implemented. 

We have had a lot of issues since we moved to Unified Support. There have been work gaps there, and we believe they fixed them, but we need to make sure that they are going to be sustainable. It is to be seen.

In terms of features, our technical team would be able to speak about the areas of improvement better. In terms of additional features, that would again require a conversation with the technical team as we are thinking about what pieces and parts are missing. We have a feature set that we have shared with Microsoft, and that gets into a lot of detail. We did the analysis. We believe that we are on the road map for some of those feature sets.

Purview is a relatively newer offering. We upgraded to E5, and we are just starting to do the implementation. It has been about four months.

Stability-wise, it is there. The product is enterprise-grade, so definitely, there are no doubts in our mind about that. Its functionality and capability will keep improving as we go along. We are confident in the stability aspect.

Scalability should be fine. At least for our footprint, it should be fine. We are a 7,000-employee company, so it is not a huge footprint. If we are talking about mega giants, such as Saudi Aramco, or Procter and Gamble, that would be a different question.

We have had a lot of issues since we moved to Unified Support. It has largely been because of the amount of traffic that they have under Unified Support, and it almost feels like their back office is not necessarily trained very well to handle those kinds of calls. Instead of a high-tech solution offering, it is just something that people in the back office can hand off from one shift to another, so their transition points are not correct.

It is hard to find the right people at Microsoft to support the technologies that we have from them, but the account team has made a lot of effort. They have put a lot of effort and brought it to their attention. Kudos to them for trying to fix the problem, but it is still early to say if we are on what we call emergency support, or if this is a level of sustainable performance that they can bring, which is going to keep us happy. 

We were using other options. We had technology gaps. We had a fragmentation of visibility and things, but we were not able to get a full estate view of it. Those were all supposed to solve cancer and world hunger, but they did not, so we did not go into Purview with that mindset. However, what we are hoping for is that there would be incremental improvements that would get us enough visibility of real estate and help us solve the problems of the past.

I was not involved in its deployment. Our technical team handles that.

It is too early for that, but we are hopeful. We hope to see a landing point by the end of this year, and then start to ramp up on the value prop by the middle of next year.

The interesting part is how they are bundling the version into the E5 stack. If it was not for that inclusion, this would have been a difficult conversation for us, so kudos to Microsoft on that. Separating it out may become a problem for customer retention. It is definitely a good move on Microsoft's part to include it as part of any existing or any system upgrades for customers that were on E3. Is the cost good or bad? Any cost that is incurred is really about the value. Do we want to put a price on a breach? I hope not. That is where the cost comes in. The value comes in right there.

You get what you pay for most of the time, and that is just the reality in life. You can go out and buy six cheap items that do not work well together or you can invest with Microsoft in their stack, which allows us to keep everything working, as we would expect it to work, seamlessly and with as little ongoing investment. We have a very large partnership with Microsoft, and so from a cost standpoint, we are paying for it. We never like to pay for things, but we have to. We believe we are in a pretty fair spot with Microsoft on that.

The evaluation landed on the maturity scale that Microsoft had shown. We went through almost a year-long evaluation with them of our landscape, and during that stage, they went from multiple small snippets of PoCs, etcetera, to win the business and convince us more to say, "This is why we need to move there." It was a competitive analysis, but it was more time-based and maturity-based rather than Microsoft versus the rest of the world. Our intent was to move to Microsoft, but the question for us was—Was Microsoft ready?

To those evaluating this solution, I would advise making sure you go through a proper set of PoCs and give it adequate time. We gave it almost a year, and we still felt it was not enough time. Have a very clear definition of what your requirements, use cases, and expectations are, and truthfully check the boxes for yourself. It is not a comparison between Microsoft and other products. They all do the same thing differently. It is really a bottom-line comparison of whether it gets the job done and what is more important for you. Is the technology stack consolidation important, or having the best of the best for each of those capabilities is important? That is a differentiator for most companies. They have to get real clear in their heads.

I have not heard too many complaints. Given where we are, conservatively, I would rate Microsoft Purview a good solid six out of ten. It is not negative feedback, but it is just too early to say that it is going to check all the boxes for us. However, our initial impressions are great. As with every implementation, once the initial phase is over, we get into some of the details. We find gaps and some very positive things, but at the same time, we do not want to say it is going to work. There is a lot of learning that has to happen. How many gaps are going to remain still needs to be seen once we address the implementation across our landscape.

I see many customers these days looking into Microsoft Purview syntax and mainly using the solution for data lineage and data governance. The customer wants to be able to understand data a bit more within the organization and be able to classify and protect sensitive data and understand what it is. 

My company works with the healthcare and financial sectors.

Microsoft Purview can give good information on the cause of the breach, and that comes into the forefront of many organizations nowadays to know how to protect data not only from external sources but also internally as well.

Much of the feedback I get from customers on how Microsoft Purview improves organizations is around the visibility factor at the end of the day. It's all about protecting data and ensuring you don't lose data externally and internally.

Many customers also say that Microsoft Purview also helps simplify the management of data governance policies, as it gives you visibility, automation, and authentication. For example, you can now see classifications whether your documents meet specific criteria or not, through Microsoft Purview.

From my experience and customer feedback, one of the most valuable features of Microsoft Purview is ease of use, especially for content hosted within Microsoft 365 and Azure. You can connect Microsoft Purview to different sources.

I also like that the pricing model for the solution is reasonable, though that would depend on how much you use. That makes it much easier for people to have that initial setup, get started, and see all of the information straight away. If you want a more complex Microsoft Purview setup, you may have to contact a consultant for more technical aspects to enable the solution. Still, one of the most significant selling points for me is the setup, including the automation experience.

Microsoft Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and multiple-platform environments, including AWS and GCP, which I find very important because if you look at the percentage of customers that have multiple automated channels or multiple-platform setups, it's very, very high, primarily because customers don't put eggs in one basket.

It's also essential for me that Microsoft Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices, including other SaaS apps, as I spend quite a lot of my time using my iPhone and iPad, whether for a webinar at the end of the day while I'm preparing dinner, and that's still the same information on my company laptop or desktop, which means I still need to ensure that the data I access is still very secure. 

Though you can protect yourself with multifactor authentication, people find ways to get past that, so you have to ensure that even if someone's getting into your organization now, the location within is siloed, and you could see the different classification levels that could easily be applied, making it more difficult for that person to get what he needs easily, compared to SharePoint that's open to everyone, making it a walk in the park, so what Microsoft Purview is able to provide is very important in this hybrid age.

I find Microsoft Purview very important in its natively integrated compliance across Azure, Dynamics 365, and Office 365, as you'll have sensitive content stored these days, especially if you're an organization with a lot of customer data in your database. Microsoft Purview helps secure customer records and also has a data loss prevention feature, plus data governance and compliance features that I find very important for organizations.

Microsoft Purview has also helped reduce the number of solutions my company needed. The solution is part of the project Microsoft has rapidly been developing, and over the years, the components of the Microsoft services went through a confusing renaming cycle. There were a lot of different services, but I've found out how each should be used, such as for security and compliance, some complementing technologies for identification, classification, traffic, and AI, for example, that I'm continuing to evaluate. At first, there was a bit of confusion, but now it all makes sense.

The simplicity of the number of solutions made data governance a lot easier. With Microsoft Purview, you won't have to interact with a substantial amount of systems, and I'm a firm believer that more risk could arise when you introduce more complexity into a solution or system you're developing. The services you make use of could sometimes deprecate and change features. Hence, having compliance, governance, automation, and data discovery features in one solution, such as Microsoft Purview, makes my life and the customer's life easier.

A key feature of Microsoft Purview for me is that it was built while considering critical regulations worldwide. My company works with organizations where there's usually a requirement for compliance, such as GDPR. I also work with many Germany-based customers that require GWC compliance, and there's strictness with the way data is stored and classified. You must advise and know all regulations, which Microsoft Purview enables you to do. For example, if you look at the amount of data in terms of size, such as the terabytes being housed in various websites, there's no way you could get the information without Microsoft Purview. There's too much data within organizations now, and all it takes is a tiny percentage of that data to be shared in the wrong way or be leaked, which could incur substantial fines, so Microsoft Purview is a product that justifies itself in that very premise.

Microsoft Purview has also enabled visibility, giving customers an overview of how much data is compliant. The solution also provides visibility into the quality of data, movement, and performance, so visibility is another valuable feature of Microsoft Purview.

My company uses the AI and automation features of Microsoft Purview, which I find very critical within the solution. The speed and accuracy of risk detection improved with  AI and automation features because classifying data is easier now, giving me a headstart. The AI can do essential, light work, going around all of the various containers within the organization, so the team only does twenty percent of the work now, such as management, reviews, and reports.

Microsoft Purview AI and automation make it less admin-intensive from a data protection and compliance point of view. If you look into a role within an organization, for example, I'm a DPO, which is a relatively new role. With Microsoft Purview, you'd only need one to two people full-time, another key benefit of the solution. The rest of the work would continue to fall on the shoulders of the IT team, which is stretched in organizations today.

The solution enables you to show real-time compliance. Microsoft Purview gives you the necessary data because it ties into the compliance scores when you eliminate instances. Right now, there are a lot of backlog reports in terms of compliance on static IPs, data leakage, lineage, and backup.

Real-time compliance data provided by Microsoft Purview has helped organizations, especially in terms of meeting with compliance regulators. I helped organizations with technical enablement, mainly stakeholders who requested assistance, and the reporting in Microsoft Purview has taken so much responsibility from the hands of stakeholders. The solution has better reporting that has broken down data for organizations, giving headlines and figures you usually won't easily catch, which makes successful deployment a lot easier.

Microsoft Purview has also helped reduce the time to action on insider threats, whether fraud or rest protection. Organizations, especially huge financial organizations, are bothered by threats, and Microsoft Purview has been beneficial. In terms of how much the solution reduced the time to action on insider threats, based on all industries I've worked with, it's twenty to twenty-five percent. I'm basing this figure on the fact that the automation from Microsoft Purview is very powerful, and the solution gives accurate protection. If you get an alert from Microsoft Purview, it's usually for valid reasons.

Overall, Microsoft Purview has affected the ability of customers or organizations to stay on top of compliance. You see many good products in the market, but if you have a customer  mainly using Microsoft products, such as Dynamics 365, CRM, etc., and the customer belongs to the financial industry or the public sector, for example, that's dealing with information, it's a no-brainer to have Microsoft Purview in the organization.

One drawback of Microsoft Purview, though it's beneficial and easy to use, is that when you start plugging in connectors for third-party sources when setting the solution up for data collection, it becomes a bit more tricky. There's limited documentation, so it's not as intuitive as setting up other parts of Microsoft Purview. If the process of connecting with third-party cloud providers and other SaaS products could be simplified, that would make Microsoft Purview a better product.

In terms of how Microsoft Purview supports ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources, from a user experience point of view, it's a bit more challenging and results in a bit more struggle in that area. Overall, it's decent, but it would benefit customers if Microsoft spent more time and energy improving that experience and getting it on par with other Microsoft products. Microsoft could make it a lot easier to build connections with other cloud vendors, such as AWS and GCS. Microsoft will get there eventually, but it needs to understand its customer base and look at the percentage.

I've been using Microsoft Purview for a year and a half, particularly getting up to speed with the current version. However, Microsoft had different iterations of the solution that my company used in the past two years.

Microsoft Purview is a very stable solution.

Microsoft Purview is a scalable solution, and that's the beauty of a cloud-based solution. It doesn't matter if you bring more files and documents tomorrow. You won't have to go to the data center and deploy server loads. You just have to pay, and that's the beauty of it.

I'd give Microsoft Purview technical support a rating of seven out of ten because it's tricky to get to the correct department, such as the product support team, for example, when you contact Microsoft Support. I do like that there's user documentation that helps get a lot out of the way, and my experience with Microsoft user documentation is pretty good.

Neutral

Some customers used different setups before using Microsoft Purview, but those were outdated and designed for file sharing and on-premises storage. Now, they are on Microsoft Purview.

Microsoft Purview, as a solution, is set apart by being baked into the Microsoft Stack.

Deploying Microsoft Purview is pretty straightforward, though an organization may have to contact a partner or consultant to assist with deploying the tool because my company doesn't deal with critical business situations. There's a need to ensure that the website is set up proactively, works with the tool, and also covers information on how to address possible issues that could arise in the future.

The deployment itself isn't too tricky and can be done quickly, but you must ensure that the organization has adopted it. It's not merely about deploying Microsoft Purview, and then that's it. You must ensure the proper psychology is there and that you're continuing to scan new data sources if you're buying into a new service. You have to keep the solution up-to-date and also know what to do if a disaster occurs. Microsoft Purview isn't a tool you can just turn off. Each organization goes through a pilot, and my company does a phased approach, such as a pre-production environment. My company shows the customer how the tool works and what it would do in different scenarios and lets the customer practice using Microsoft Purview.

You get ROI from Microsoft Purview because its cost is entirely justified, considering the value it brings back to your organization from the data insights the tool provides. The significant decrease in the percentage of risks, particularly from insider frauds and data loss, whether maliciously or unintentionally, or by accident, helps the organization enjoy ROI from Microsoft Purview.

The solution also helps my company uphold its reputation of abiding by European legislation, such as the GDPR, knowing that the company can keep data secure and that Microsoft Purview can help prevent organizations or companies from being out of business by decreasing data loss and insider fraud risks, so I'd say the ROI can be pretty high from the solution.

Microsoft Purview has reasonable pricing. The solution helps save money, and its cost is justified, at least for the organizations I've worked with. Microsoft Purview has a pay-per-use pricing model, so it's one of the most cost-effective tools, as your cost will be based on your usage. It's a pricing model that Microsoft has nailed down, making it great that whether you're a small organization or a multinational, giant organization, the pricing model for Microsoft Purview works. If you look into the cost of the breach versus the ongoing learning cost over a year or so, the solution's price is more than justified. However, I'm unable to give the exact figure on how much money Microsoft Purview can save an organization, as I'm a consultant who doesn't have precise information.

I don't use Microsoft Purview for data loss protection within the company, but I've seen its use case, so I understand where you would use that feature.

Regarding how Microsoft Purview AI and automation features affected the quality of insights my customers have, it's hard to say currently because there's not much of a benchmark to go off. The AI isn't going to be as accurate as a person who's been in the organization for ten years, for example, who knows the data and types of data the organization has. If you look at the way AI is developing, it's not fair to rate it yet, but if it keeps going in the same trajectory, it will be possible in the not-so-distant future.

Microsoft Purview has a cloud-based deployment on Azure.

The customers I've worked with vary from multinational data organizations with fifty thousand people to organizations with five hundred to less than a thousand people.

In terms of maintenance, my recommendation is to always keep on top of it, such as continuously scanning and being on top of it when building new apps and doing data migrations, but not necessarily in terms of updates. You should ensure encrypting your data as well, but from a maintenance point of view, Microsoft Purview is pretty self-sufficient, but you'd have to monitor it and not forget about it if you want to keep reaping the benefits.

I would recommend Microsoft Purview to others, but my advice is to ensure that the data layer underneath your organization is solid and that you're building a solid foundation. The success of any product or solution is dependent on a good foundation. You also have to ensure that you have the right people, the deployment is based on your industry, and you're meeting the standards, whether setting the solution up within a year or so. It's similar to building a house. Without the proper foundation, you're never going to finish building properly. Issues will crop up, and your home won't be properly aligned. However, if you build it entirely on a concrete, perfectly flat base, then it will be maintained well, and you can go forward with it.

My rating for Microsoft Purview is eight out of ten because it only requires limited improvement, and you won't find another solution better than Microsoft Purview in the market.

I'm a Microsoft consultant involved in the technical enablement of various Microsoft services.

We use it for the text of emails. We use it to keep track of groups as well. We also use it to go through the mailbox of a former employee to retrieve the mailbox for a new employee. We use it for e-discovery and content search in emails across our organization.

We use it internally for just a few use cases. I know there are a lot of connections between it and other Microsoft applications and multiple clouds, but we don't have those use cases currently.

We carry out implementations for customers on these particular solutions. For example, if we're selling a Microsoft 365 solution to them, we use it to secure their data, especially their emails through backup, and SharePoint.

It has improved our ability to retain data and retrieve the data that we need at a future date.

We are also able to see how sensitive data flows across the organization, so it has been very helpful in telling us where that data is originally from and where it is being sent to. We have the ability to track it and control and restrict it from going outside our organization. We've benefited from that a lot.

Purview also enables us to show compliance in real time. We can see what the requirements are and then we can apply them across the organization. That has been very helpful.

It has also helped us to stay updated and make sure that we are not out of compliance. It keeps us updated with any new policies that are required for organizations like ours. That's of great value to us.

Another advantage is that it has definitely reduced the time-to-action on insider threats, although we don't measure that at the moment. But from experience, we can tell how much it is saving us in investigations, compared to before we had the solution.

The most valuable feature is the information protection, the way we're able to retain emails.

Another aspect that is very important is that Purview has been built to take critical regulations from around the world into account. It gives us trust that all of the compliance requirements are being met and that we just have to take care of our data. We don't have to worry about whether the regulations are being met around the infrastructure and we can just focus on our data. It's very important to us to have that level of trust in our systems.

Also, Purview's data loss protection for remediating policy violations is very good. It gives you the opportunity to know your data and apply policies around it. If those policies are flouted, you can always track what's happening. You have options such as alerting the person who is committing that action, or you can take automatic action by blocking, for example, an email that is being sent externally. It's very useful.

I've been using it since as far back as when it was Security and Compliance Center, before there was a separation between compliance and security. That happened around 2019, so I've been using it since 2019.

The stability is great. Like every SaaS application, there are infrastructure issues, maybe once a year. Overall, it's good.

The scalability is also great.

The service level agreement is excellent and the support follow-up is also great. They have good knowledge.

Positive

In terms of ROI, my bosses take care of that calculation, but I know we are getting benefit and value from Purview.

The categorization within the licensing could be improved. There are a lot of solutions within Microsoft Purview. If the licensing could be a bit clearer and the solutions could be better categorized according to function and across multiple environments, that would be excellent. The licensing is very confusing.

The pricing, for the solutions and value being provided, is fair. But that ties back to what I said about the licensing. There are a lot of standalone solutions you can get, and there are different licensing options for them. Depending on what you need, you can have a cost-effective solution; you can figure out your cost and benefit. It's affordable.

We are still exploring whether Purview can help reduce the number of solutions that we have interacting with each other. There are a lot of solutions within Microsoft Purview, but we still have some data that is on-prem and we are still looking at how we can expand and connect to those areas. It's something that is in progress.

In terms of maintenance, it's a SaaS solution, so the applications are automatically updated. There's almost zero maintenance. We do have to take care of configuration and updating preferences. I am able to handle that myself.

My advice is to develop a clear use case and a roadmap, perhaps from a consultant if you don't have the time, or spend some time doing research on it, because there are a lot of great solutions within Microsoft Purview. You need to have a strategy for the way you combine the solutions together.

I have mostly used Purview for the Content search. For example, if our CEO wants to look into whether a certain type of conversation is taking place in all of the data, we use the Content search. 

The second most common scenario for which I use Purview is endpoint DLP, where we have blocked USBs and different browsers and implemented other endpoint policies.

There is also a new feature that we are trying to use, the Privacy Risk Management, where we are trying to upload the fingerprint data of our users to use it on our endpoint devices. We are replacing Windows 11 for Business.

Purview is becoming the new one-stop solution. It gives you a clearer, better perspective and view of your data all across your Microsoft suite.

In addition, it absolutely saves money. It brings a lot of efficiency when it comes to extracting and exporting data that is required by upper management.

The most valuable feature is the information protection because Windows Information Protection was discontinued from the M365 suite, which was Intune. It was very much in demand. Then Purview came in; it was Compliance Manager, and they changed the name to Purview. The information protection they inaugurated in Purview is the most demanded and the most useful in Purview.

Purview gives you a different perspective on exactly what is running in your organization. It's just very vast. I can't summarize it into one or two points. It starts off with records management, insider risk management, and information protection. And there is the discovery of the clouds, and we can get analytics on that as well, so that we know which user is using which cloud application and for how much time. The Activity explorer tells us which user was transferring out what data at what moment and on which device, including the serial number.

It was made for data protection in multi-cloud environments, but not just multi-cloud; it was made for on-prem as well. If our devices are hybrid, we can absolutely use Purview's data protection. Because it's a very new tool, people don't know exactly how important it is. It covers all my tenants in all my Microsoft applications, and I can get analytics through a couple of toggle buttons. 

The classifiers they have brought in are also important for any organization because, in the Content search, they have default classifiers that can actually detect when a user has been harassed or when a user has shared his personal banking details. That is important when it comes to compliance.

It's a lovely tool for supporting ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources. I worked with corporate devices in my previous project, wherein we were trying to connect the WhatsApp database with our Purview to have a better hold on the corporate devices and know what conversations were taking place. When talking about connectors, Purview is leveling up. It was just remarkable when I realized that we could actually set up a connector with WhatsApp for our Purview and have analytics from the database of our tenant.

It is a remarkable pivot that Microsoft has made in data analytics, data accumulation, and playing around with every single word that has been exchanged within the tenant or organization. It will do remarkably well in the future. We all know that there are a couple of other remarkable applications that Microsoft got, but it took 20 years. One example is Intune. Although Purivew is fairly new on the market, I'm pretty sure there will soon be more and more people trained on it, getting certified, and trying to implement the features for daily use in their organizations.

The best part about remediating the data on an organization's tenant is the recording audit they have started. It's a new feature that offers an auto-auditing mode in the Activity explorer, which constantly monitors all of the data. And, of course, according to the rules, it will drop notifications by email to the global admins.

And Compliance Manager is part of the solution, and you always get to see your real-time compliance score.

It would help if we could have a view of the devices we know to be potential weak points in an organization—those couple of devices that are very prone to external attacks. If we could have a view something like we have in CrowdStrike—which is, I believe, the biggest competitor to Microsoft when it comes to security—a node nodal view, which we also have in Defender, that would make it a more complete, one-stop solution. That would save a lot of time for the admins and the engineers.

I have been using Microsoft Purview for the past eight months.

I haven't had a chance to open up a ticket with Purview technical support yet.

When you talk about how important data loss prevention is in an organization, you can tell from its name, "data loss prevention". An organization should be ready for any notorious activities. That is where DLP comes in. We can set alerts and have custom policies. And we have the endpoint DLP settings as well. It is very similar to Windows Information Protection, which we used to use in past through Intune. But there is this new place from which we can set up the endpoint DLP and make sure that the probability of losing data is minimal.

As for using Purview for educating users on how to handle sensitive data, the recommendations are always Microsoft-specific, never engineer-specific. Microsoft has four templates for basic security, and it says that your security score will be 99 by using them. But it gets a little bit difficult for an end-user to work with them. It depends on the organization. We can sell the Activity explorer to a client so that we have constant monitoring of every single file that is changed, modified, archived, or shuffled from the cloud to a local device, if that is allowed in the organization. It provides a view of what the organization's data is doing, and we can give that to top management to provide them with more and more clarity.

It's too soon for me to say whether using Purview will reduce the number of solutions we have that interact with each other. If I have to do a message trace, I can go through a Content search on Exchange Online as well. If we're talking about the Activity explorer and giving visual context to where data is going and how it has been used, again, I can find that on the Defender portal. Based on my experience with Purview, it is more of a redundancy. Microsoft loves doing that, having the same features in different places. It's still a fabulous tool, but I have noticed a redundancy of features in other admin centers.

Purview has definitely helped to reduce the time to action on insider threats, but in comparison to Defender, it still needs a little bit of work. The features are on the redundant side. The admins do get notified in real time via email. It's similar to Defender, and I am looking forward to seeing what different aspects Purview will bring on when it comes to insider threats.

It has its pros and cons because it's fairly new. You have to understand what an organization is asking for, but once it is set up and it goes into its semi-automated mode, it is a time-saving machine.

I use their information protection labels. 

Information protection labels help us classify and protect data from unauthorized access.

An organization architect has to design the labels to describe the criticality of the data.

For example, we'd put labels and restrictions on certain data, like salary details, which would only be available to HR and certain managers. 

We can also classify policies based on the organization. Workloads and attachments are labeled so that they can not be shared outside of the classification label. 

Data sensitivity is a crucial issue for everyone, especially with remote and hybrid work. Everything has moved to the cloud in the last five or six years. We need to protect our data and the cloud and we do that with our own managed key to ensure DLP.

The labeling is excellent.

The endpoint DLP is very good. They are doing a lot of enhancements there. The DLP features consist of restricting copy-paste, network sharing, and blocking. We can take actions like blocking and warning with custom messaging to the end users. We are able to effectively reduce the data loss through endpoint DLP. 

We also don't have to pay for third-party DLP solutions. 

The OCR feature is really great. They've been improving it. If there is sensitive information in an image, it can be scanned and protected. 

We can prevent, block, or audit however we like. There are activity explorer audit logs that are available for 90 days. 

The solution can be used across Mac, Android and iOS. The support is there if you use those. MacOS does have some different settings, however, I haven't really explored it too much.

Purview is natively integrated with Azure and 365 workloads. We can classify the Azure Infra as well. 

We're using the solution at a large scale. It's important that Purview takes into account critical integrations from around the world. The labeling will automatically classify data that will cover sensitive data. We can make our own classifications on top of that if we need more security. Once the data classification happens in Purview, we can take an extra step if we like. 

The data loss protection is great for remediating policy violations. We have policies configured via labels. We can check in with individual users to see if there are any malicious activities happening. We're extremely confident no one can take data off-site. Even the labels are encrypted. Even if someone takes the data, it's encrypted and safe. 

DLP comes into the picture when a data classification happens. We have to educate the users that we've classified the data based on sensitivity. We enforce DLP policies by forcing users to use labels. If they do not use labels, they cannot, for example, use files for their day-to-day work. We've imposed classification on them. They cannot share or take data without the proper label or access.

Purview has helped us reduce the number of solutions we need to interact with. This fits perfectly with today's data privacy and security concerns. Corporate devices are completely managed through the support of this solution.

Purview has positively affected the visibility we have into our estate. Once the data is classified, you get a complete 360-degree view of it, including where it is and the labels associated with it. With the content explorer, we have eyes on the entirety of our data as it's hosted on the cloud. 

It helps us ensure compliance in real-time. We don't face any issues right now with compliance. Security and compliance are completely in sync, and we've defined the necessary policies. We're audit-ready.  

The solution has helped us know of any insider threats. It's helped us reduce time to action on insider threats by 40%.

While the product doesn't exactly save us money, it does save us time. It's reduced time spent on security by two to three hours. 

There are some non-Microsoft file formats that are not supported. 

While they seem to be focused on Sharepoint and OneDrive, I'd advise that if somebody saves something locally to their hard drive, this should also be classified and protected. 

The DLP has to become more mature now that there are other competitors present in the market.

While the solution went through a name change two years ago, however, I used the compliance security portal for the last three to four years.

The solution isn't completely stable. It's not mature. I'd rate stability six out of ten. There are bugs and glitches. The product is also evolving. They're always adding new features based on feedback and the experience of the customer. They deploy a ton of fixes. 

We have the solution across multiple locations and departments. We have about 2,200 people in the organization, and around 1,700 people use it. 

The solution isn't completely scalable. They are working on it. 

I'm not sure what happened. However, I've noticed, after getting very good support for the last ten years, that, in the last two, the support level has gotten worse. Their engineers don't know the basics of their products. They need to be more knowledgeable and offer a better response time. 

Negative

We did not use anything previously. 

We did testing and a POC for three months until the rollout. We had three to four people working on it. However, one engineer is sufficient with some guidance from Microsoft. One or two engineers would be enough for a complete deployment.  

The implementation process is straightforward. It's not overly complex. 

There is no maintenance needed. Microsoft supports it; if there is any service interruption, they will cover you.

We have witnessed an ROI. We save on costs and do not need to do too much manual work. We've seen an ROI of 17% to 18%.

If you are an organization using Microsoft 365 solutions, it's okay. If you are on Google Solutions and using Google Cloud, it might be costly. Having the complete Microsoft bundle makes it feasible and cost-effective. 

I've heard that Purview and Forcepoint are similar and very comparable.

We're a Microsoft customer.

If an organization doesn't want to spend money on other solutions in the market, I'd recommend Microsoft. Instead of nothing, you'll have something. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.