Microsoft Purview Valuable Features

SAURABH-PRAMANICK - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at Morgan Stanley

The inheritance feature is very good.

It is user-friendly. It’s cloud native and uses the Azure Stack which makes the deployment easy.

The documentation is very exhaustive. Anyone can go ahead and try different use cases.

Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments, including AWS and GCP. Many organizations have a Windows operating system along with other Microsoft protection capabilities. The integration with risk and compliance is good. Microsoft has been across various areas of product expertise and covered everything under its umbrella.

It is important that Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices, and data in other SaaS apps. It makes it easier to integrate everything. You don’t have to be specific to Microsoft products. It makes it more flexible.

It is important to us that Purview has taken into account critical regulations from around the world. They have captured most of the popular ones that are there. Many of the solutions still don't have this entire capability. When it comes to regulation and compliance, they have tried to get the most out of it and it’s included as part of PowerEdge.

We use the solution for data loss protection. For remediation. on a scale of one to five, it comes to around four. The security protection component was anyway there. They are just building on top of that and building above that.

Purview data loss protection is good at educating users on how best to handle sensitive data. There are learning and training modules available, which are helpful. It is still not there among the leaders as there are some organizations that are purely security solutions. Still, they have an edge over human identity governance. While they are not the leaders yet, they are trying to be there by trying to continuously improve and trying to provide the best of their capabilities.

Purview has helped us to reduce the number of solutions we need to interact with to some extent. Basically, it tries to solve some of the common problems raised with respect to governance.

The solution has helped improve visibility. It’s taking us to maturity level three by having the visibility aspects in place.

We haven’t used AI too much. The classification components are primarily being used. Other than that, it does have some features when it comes to text mining and identifying the EMEA site. To some extent, they have those AI capabilities and we'll try to leverage that more. We’ve been able to remove some manual activities. It was able to solve some of the problems based on the parameters and thresholds that had been defined.

It's helped provide us with a more precise, clear understanding of our data. 

Purview enables us to handle our compliance in real time. 

It does have regulation-specific templates that could be directly used to start with the journey of doing assessments identifying the maturity and then closing the gap as part of the gap assessment.

Purview helped to reduce the time to action on insider threats to some extent. We weren’t dependent on it much yet. We’ve used other vendors and technologies for that.

We went for an enterprise module. It helps us to start the journey. With it, we can start leveraging modules as part of the overall architectural stack. It does help with that. I’m not sure how much money has been saved just yet. However, there has been a fair bit of savings of both time and money.

To some extent, it has really helped us stay on top of compliance. Before, we had to do it manually. Having templates helps. It helps management understand whether we are compliant or not and can help work to close the gaps.

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Peter West - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at Pesaro IT

The labelling is the most valuable feature for the companies I'm installing it for. Some of them have several thousand staff, and their concerns are around confidential or private data being shared. The labels and the policies involved with them give them that initial visibility.

It's absolutely important that it covers multi-cloud and multi-platform environments, including AWS, GCP, et cetera. If you're going to have a DLP solution, it needs to cover as much as possible. A solution that doesn't integrate with other systems isn't going to work for most companies. That's one of the reasons I like Purview: you can plug in and use APIs to connect to other systems and scan other data.

As for connecting to iOS, Mac, and Android devices, the more the better in terms of what Purview can do from a connection aspect.

And Purview's natively integrated compliance across Azure Dynamics and Office 365 is absolutely essential. It's really good. A lot of my clients are Office 365 customers, and they hold a lot of their data in the 365 tenant. It makes Purview an obvious choice for customers with that environment and setup. Any company that uses Microsoft 365 should use Purview to some degree.

Another aspect that is very important is that the solution was built taking into account critical regulations from around the world. Some of my clients are huge financial organizations, and they need to implement things like ISO security, GDPR, and financial scanning on things like credit card numbers. It's really good.

I've also implemented the DLP policies, settings, scanning, et cetera, as well as rules around that. For example, when data is encrypted when it's sent or shared, there is no forwarding of emails.

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James McDowall - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Microsoft Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The sensitivity and retention options in Purview are excellent. We had an internal document retention schedule, but when we first created it, much of our data was in paper form. As our data became digitized and moved to SharePoint Online, particularly when we migrated away from our on-premises file server, the ability to replicate that retention schedule in Purview and deploy it across all of our SharePoint sites and OneDrive made life so much easier. Purview helped us automate and control our data without having to rely on people to manually tag documents with specific retention periods.

Similarly, our sensitivity labels were scattered throughout SharePoint Online. We wanted to push data governance internally, not just from a technical data management perspective, but also from an education perspective. So, we created a data classification system based on sensitivity and deployed it across our 365 apps, including Outlook, OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint. This not only allowed us to protect more sensitive data and ensure that it was being handled responsibly, but it also allowed us to use features like prompting users to apply a label to a document before interacting with it. This helped us deploy labels more quickly and also got staff thinking about the data they were working with.

In my experience, particularly in organizations that work with a lot of sensitive data, staff can become complacent over time and desensitized to the importance of looking after that data if they're using it day in and day out. So, having a visual prompt to apply a label and think about the documents they're working with and what that means was a really useful way of promoting data governance across our business.

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Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Purview
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Purview. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Nitin Kakkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager Data Supply Chain at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

It natively integrates. It gives you a lot of controls, awareness, features, and best good practices, making conversations a lot easier with the clients. Features are pre-built. All you have to do is configure it properly, and you get the correct tables and names of the entities with data. This reduces effort and gains efficiency, both for the clients and for SIs (like us). 

It is critical that Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments. That is the number one reason that people are adopting hybrid and best-of-the-breed approaches. Especially in banking, it is critical because people want to protect, govern, and secure their data. This is one of the first conversations that happen with security and the architecture group on the client side.

It is a heterogeneous environment. That is a desire that the clients are asking for increasingly. So, the feature that provides data protection for iOS, Mac, Android, and data in other SaaS apps is pretty important.

Batch sources can connect well.

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Daniël Zadrosz - PeerSpot reviewer
M365 Consultant at Advantive

I really like the entire system for auto-labeling content. It's a very refined system. I use the Keyword Query Language to define refined string-based metadata, and then I can really go deep into the specific data with the specific properties labeled in such and such a way. That's a very good basis for the use cases that I have. That gives me a lot of leeway and a lot of freedom to really enclose a lot of specific use cases.

Another thing I'm very much a fan of is the notion of machine-learning-based labeling. However, as with syntax, which I'm a big user of as well, the automatic machine-learning-based labeling and identification still requires you to do a lot of work to make it work. But you can really fine-tune it, and I love that part.

Beyond the labeling, when talking about the audit log, what I very much like is that it's very well integrated. You can use the audit log to focus and zoom in on your needs. You can use querying and a lot of good filtering on that as well. I use it for a lot of regulatory processes where I need to figure out who accessed what document at what time, after which changes. I really love that. From a single place I can manage pretty much our entire regulatory system. I'm a compliance-focused person. I work a lot with the GDPR law in Europe. Purview allows for a lot of AI-based identification of GDPR-sensitive data. That really helps with organizations such as one of my clients, which is an organization with 20,000 knowledge workers.

As long as we stay within the Microsoft ecosystem, natively integrated compliance is absolute legend. It's a divine ability to have a clear view of what's happening in our tenant. I love every aspect of it. You can set rules and different forms of triggers to implement automated actions based on exports from the audit logs, as well as alerts that you trigger for anything that is happening in your Microsoft ecosystem. That is extremely valuable. That is what enables you to go from needing 10 people to administer an environment to needing three. There's a lot of financial gain there, as well as control over human error.

In addition, when you look at vulnerability management, there are multiple options for a point-based, almost gamification-based system. You just need to tick these boxes and that will get you X points. I want to work towards more than 80 percent compliance and more than 80 percent of the vulnerabilities managed. To get to that point, and to have a clear overview, is very difficult when handling thousands of users and thousands of devices. But turning those numbers into graphics and statistics that even make sense to your management is a capability of Microsoft Purview. If you need to implement changes, there are numbers there that non-IT management and business staff can understand.

My specialty is not in explaining to management what the risks are of having something break or what gain there is in mitigating a vulnerability. However, Microsoft Purview helps you have an overall perspective of your IT landscape.

If you feel that an organization needs to evolve in a certain way, you want to try and explain a vulnerability from a technical perspective. For example, we might need to exchange this key with that key, or move to customer-owned keys. You can't explain to them why they should invest because they don't understand these technical issues. But Purview is very strong at showing you statistics. It shows you that this issue is present in X percent of the users or Y percent of the devices. It then enables you to implement those changes with rules and so that you don't have to manually configure the changes for every user or device. Purview fits perfectly into that approach because it tells you which groups of people have active issues.

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Ian Santillan - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at Hitachi Solutions

It is designed to seamlessly connect to various data sources, which is particularly beneficial for our customers who primarily use Microsoft technologies. These sources include Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, Synapse Workspace, and other platforms that Purview natively supports. Data cataloging is a fundamental feature of Purview, allowing users to organize and manage their data assets effectively. It also offers powerful lineage capabilities, enabling users to trace data from its source systems to the reporting layer. While there are some limitations in supporting end-to-end lineage for certain assets, Purview excels in automating lineage for supported assets such as Azure Data Factory and Synapse pipelines. Another valuable feature of Purview is its glossary terms functionality. Recently, we completed a project for a customer who was migrating their data dictionary from SharePoint to Purview's data catalog. This migration allowed them to seamlessly connect glossary terms to their ingested data assets, enhancing their data management and governance capabilities significantly.

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Hanuman Devineni - PeerSpot reviewer
DB Architect at a retailer with 5,001-10,000 employees

The most valuable features are lineage, data cataloging, glossaries, and the new access delegation feature. This feature will make it quicker to delegate access to all the data with a single request button.

On Azure, it's definitely important that Purview delivers data protection across multi-platform environments. It gives us complete visibility of where our security data resides and what types of data we have. 

This is useful because we store data across multiple platforms, including databases, storage, spreadsheets, Excel, CSS, and caching. Purview helps us to see where exactly our data is stored across the system, especially in Azure. This is a great advantage because it helps us to feel more secure when moving our data to the cloud.

Moreover, Purview's data connector platform is getting valid day-to-day. It has connectivity to major cloud platforms, like GCP and AWS, and also it has a couple of areas. So it supports multi-platform and a couple of on-premise systems. It also connects a few of the heterogeneous databases.

It gives us insights. There are two aspects of it—one is about data governance and one is about security. Since I'm part of data governance, it does not deal much with threats because that's a different tool that will give us more insights about the threats. But in terms of data threats, I'll have visibility on who and how to stop it.

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SR
Manager at United Healthcare

The data lineage feature stands out. It tracks where the data comes from and any changes made. However, it's currently limited to Microsoft products. We can track lineage data with Azure Data Factory.

Another great feature is the ability to connect to any data source. We've linked it with the enterprise architect, a data modeling tool, and Erwin.

It is important to us that Purview can connect to Android devices and data in other software-as-a-service apps. We've connected to Snowflake, Erwin, Oracle, DB2, and more. Name any database, and we've probably connected to it.

It is crucial that Purview offers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments like AWS and GSP. The solution has an analytics space for data governance. It helps identify who should have access to specific fields. 

Another beneficial feature is the data catalog. It allows us to streamline and classify data, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access it. 

Purview integrates natively with Azure, Dynamics 365, and Office 365, which is also a remarkable feature. We connected to Office 365 Excel files and even accessed a few emails for a proof of concept. We also linked it with Microsoft Power BI. Most Microsoft products have a very good amalgamation.

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Bipin Prakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of technology at a performing arts with 201-500 employees

The time to onboard is pretty short. It comes with a whole bunch of recommendations for somebody who has a small crew like me. It gives the ability to onboard the product and have a really good baseline to begin with. All I have to do is three or four clicks, and it's off and running. It is one of the greatest removers of barriers to entry. We have to be generalists, being a small shop. It's important for us to begin from a great place.

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HG
Security consultant at LTI Mindtree

One of the valuable features of Microsoft Purview Information Protection, formerly known as Azure Information Protection or Microsoft Information Protection is data classification and data governance. MIP provides a unified labeling client that allows users to apply sensitivity labels to documents and emails in Microsoft Office files without the need for extra plugins or agents. MIP also provides strong information rights management settings, such as the ability to specify who has access to content and at what time.

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NS
Sr. Architect at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Speaking of the valuable features, I would speak on behalf of my clients, considering how it seemed when it was implemented. So, the sensitivity labels are big. The insights are also very nice as it gives the visual representation of being able to look at what or how the data storage is performing, especially monitoring if they are tagging technical assets or if they are adding business glossary terms. So, that's big, along with the basic features of Microsoft Purview. I'd say the last one that is very big with most clients is data lineage and being able to integrate that end-to-end flow component kind of so they can see that this is data from a Power BI dataset, and then they can follow where that dataset is coming from like it's from a SQL query in a Power BI report itself and data coming from a SQL Server, etcetera, etcetera.

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NS
Microsoft architect at Kyndryl

Purview helps mitigate risk and allows us to govern the information being shared among apps and devices. Purview can restrict access from even the smallest threats, such as a mobile device trying to access and manage apps.

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Luke Greening - PeerSpot reviewer
Corporate Data Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Microsoft Purview's most valuable feature is its ability to identify content across a number of prescribed regulatory frameworks, including Microsoft, GDPR, PII, and UCC Financial. It can also help organizations identify content that is important to them but not specifically regulated. This is done by creating trainable classifiers and sensitive information types. The protection controls components are based on the perspective of the device. Microsoft Purview has been growing in popularity over the past few years, and it offers a number of tools that can help organizations manage their data.

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Jonathan Bloom - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect, Data & AI at a consultancy with self employed

The data catalog, the data lineage, the data glossary, and the classification are the key features I appreciate, along with the tight security, and role-based security.

There are two flavors of Purview. There's the compliance, which it does the security and all that. And then there's the Microsoft side, which is the data side. I primarily work on the data side. 

I like that Purview can connect to IOS, Mac, Android, and other SaaS apps.

Its data connector platform for supporting ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources works really well. We can use it either through a self-hosted integration runtime or on a VM. Or it can capture data from just about anywhere. There are about 100+ connectors. It's great.

Its natively integrated compliance across Azure Dynamics is a game changer. Back in the day, we never had anything like that. It provides self-service. It provides easy look-up and glossary terms. It also requires a new role called the data steward which we never had before.

It was built to take into account critical regulations from around the world. Now it's no longer something that's nice to have - it's necessary.

Purview helped to reduce the number of solutions we need to interact with each other. If you were to do this custom, it'd be very difficult. It's so easy to use and stand up and configure. There are some configuration requirements that are not self-explanatory. It takes some research; however, we already figured out all those things.

Purview affected the visibility we have into our estate. Now we have a complete ecosystem of where the data is, and it's a lineage. It's a game-changer.

I've used AI and automation in Purview. That's what the scans are. It uses AI to determine the classification. It's built-in. It's under the hood. People don't see it.

Our speed and accuracy of risk detection are good. From a compliance perspective, it helps identify sensitive information by classification. 

The product has helped us save both time and money. From a time perspective, there's an initial upfront cost to stand it up and configure it. However, once it's running, there's very little to do. So there's a one-time hit up front for the implementation in configuration, yet downstream, there's significant time reduction.

Money-wise, it's the same thing. You're only charged for when you run the scan since the storage is minimal. So there are ways to reduce cost, and that is by running it less frequently. Also, there's a whole bunch of out-of-the-box classifications that aren't required. There are ways to increase your cost reduction. Of course, that is not self-explanatory. You have to work with it for a while to know that.

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RP
Data Engineer at a consultancy

I like Purview's data discovery features. It automatically scans and identifies all the fields. In the last project, the customer required us to have some of the codes we specified in this, and we had to structure the codes in a specific way. We can define the structure. 

Previously, everything used Excel, so everyone had their own version of the same spreadsheet with different data, and they were managing it on SharePoint. That's why we moved it to Purview. 

Purview's privileged access manager helps us explore user access rights within the data lake. We use the data lineage and governance features. It can also explore secret data, but we still haven't implemented this feature. It has secure connectors for non-Microsoft sources, which is critical. We're bringing in files from storage. Purview connects to storage, scans it, and edits the required information. 

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DavidSmith15 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Governance Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Purview gives us the ability to find out what data we hold, and in which tables, so we can understand and have one version of the truth in every database server system.

The cataloging tool is definitely the most valuable. To catalog data you can have Purview do a scan that you configure yourself. It goes through all of your data in the database server you're connected to and will say there is "date of birth" in this column and personal information in that column, and names in this other column. It tells you about all the data you have in your tables, which helps people understand our data. We now know what data we have.

It's also very important that the solution provides data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments. Purview has links to all of our data so that we can make sure we have the right data protection involved.

Also, because it's very important to make sure that we have everything in place, and we only deal with companies that have all their compliance and rules in place, the fact Purview was built taking into account critical regulations from around the world is essential for our company, when it comes to scanning data.

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IE
CTO at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The most significant value lies in its seamless integration into the Azure ecosystem, automating various processes and reducing operational burdens. The ability to consolidate metadata from diverse services and databases into a centralized repository is crucial. Moreover, the flexibility of exchanging data through APIs allows us to extend and build upon the platform to meet our specific needs. The openness to supporting customers across various environments and the potential of a comprehensive data strategy are key factors that keep us committed to Microsoft.

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Mark Livingston - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Data authentication enables us to classify documents based on whether they should be restricted for internal consumption or permitted for external sharing. This classification allows us to apply appropriate policies to each document type.

The DLP is also a valuable feature that we use.

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Benjamin Chase - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a university with 51-200 employees

I don't know if I've gotten much value out of Purview personally, but our security team loves it. Our biggest concern is leakage or theft of our data because we have a lot of PII and stuff that has not been released. We like the insights Purview provides and the way the solution can track and manage things. I'd say that was probably their favorite piece of it so far. From everything the security team has told me, the policy management and DLP features are working spectacularly.

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Edgar Haro - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Enterprise Data and Analytics at a construction company with 501-1,000 employees

The ability to classify data quickly and effortlessly is arguably Microsoft Purview's most valuable feature. It can scan all tables and columns, identifying those that contain personal names, date builds, or other sensitive information.

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Prateek Agarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at Indian Institute of Management Visakhapatnam

Microsoft Purview is a good solution for data governance. It has notable features for maximizing the value of your data. The data discovery and the data analytics parts are great both on-premises and on-cloud. 

It is great that Microsoft Purview can integrate with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Power BI, etc. Its capability for data source scanning and classification across multiple clouds is fantastic. It also helps with security and compliance policies and group policies across the organization.

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PB
Enterprise data architect at a non-profit with 1,001-5,000 employees

There are several features. Their data labeling or data classification is particularly valuable because we want to categorize all of our data into confidential, public, or internal. Microsoft Purview works seamlessly with the Microsoft product suite, including Office 365, to schematize the data assets, so data labeling and classification have been helpful.

Microsoft Purview can connect with all of our security-related things across Office 365. It easily connects with Microsoft Defender. The integration with Microsoft Defender is good.

It works well for schematized data assets for lineage tracking. Overall, it works well if someone is using mostly Microsoft products.

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EL
Enterprise Solution Architect at a government with 10,001+ employees

The first thing that we were particularly interested in is data lineage. It makes it pretty easy to connect and scan data sources, and do any kind of additional steps like Synapse or SSIS processing.

Overall, I would laud its ease of use, intuitive interface, and easy navigation. It's a very user-friendly product that is easy to work with.

In addition, we considered the issue of multi-cloud and multi-platform environments when we were trying to identify the best tools that would serve all the requirements of our organization. Currently, we are not directly pulling data from AWS. We are working with Azure. But we have the potential in the future to consider such options. This feature is very valuable because we are planning to establish automated data-pulling from AWS.

And the solution's data connector platform for the ingestion of data from non-Microsoft data sources is very easy to use. I investigated what data sources it can work with. It's certainly easy to work with all Microsoft data sources like SQL Server, Synapse, and data lakes, but it also has great functionality working with Oracle. And of particular interest to us is the ability to pull data from Excel, CVS files, and other types of flat files.

Another particularly nice feature is its integration with other services. This is one of the biggest advantages of the solution. For example, if you need to store a key for database access, it's easy to integrate with key vault services.

And a feature that is very important to us is the fact that Purview was built taking into account critical regulations from around the world. Before we started working with Purview, we put great effort into evaluating its capabilities and functionality. We created a comparative matrix with other tools and this was one of the factors we included. We considered it a big positive for Purview.

The scanning of data sources can be scheduled to execute automatically. That is the only automation we are using within the solution.

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MK
Cybersecurity Consultant at Cyberiage

No single feature stands out as the best because the most effective approach involves combining multiple features. For example, when using information protection, labeling, and classification, a multi-step process is necessary. First, we must classify our data, which requires a thorough understanding of our environment and the nature of the data itself. Once classified, we can apply labels and establish rules governing data sharing through information protection measures. The final step involves implementing and configuring a Data Loss Prevention solution. It's crucial to remember that the goal isn't to find ideal individual features; rather, it's to leverage the synergy of multiple technologies to create a comprehensive and powerful data protection strategy.

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KK
Office 365 administrator at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees

They are improving the platform every day, and they are doing a wonderful job now. 

They also include different features. We can pre-enable classification and use enhanced labels. You can create labels to define your data class notifications, such as confidential information. You can create a system keyboard list and a dictionary with sensitivity labels.  

Microsoft introduced a compliance manager to help you find all sorts of things you can do to improve your environment to achieve a higher security score. 

Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments. It is very important. In today's world, most of the things we do are over the cloud. We use many APIs and additional apps in our environment from different vendors. Some of these APIs and apps are being configured over hybrid or multiple clouds. You can audit and monitor all data connectors, and you can configure your database and your database connectors, and all these APIs can be ported to Purview so you can monitor all the information to make sure that it does not leak. You can also encrypt such information to keep it safer.

Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices, as well as data and other SaaS apps. We have multiple users who are comfortable with different platforms. Some are on Windows. However, most of the planning teams have iOS-based devices. We like that it is supporting all these platforms and making all those devices and data flow to it. 

It is very easy to learn the interface, and it is very user-friendly. It is really helpful for us to be able to monitor and use Microsoft since it is such a strong tool for analyzing our database.

We use the solution for data loss prevention. One of the features includes this configuration template that we can use for default government policies. You can create a policy for server migration that needs some of the custom configurations, and we do have templates for payroll and inventory. We can use the DLP to educate users on policies and let them know what shouldn't be shared. We can send suggestions about how they can send certain information.

Purview enables you to handle compliance in real-time. It runs in the background and you can engage with it when you get real-time alerts. It's helped us reduce the time needed to act on threats. Instead of manually auditing, we get notifications and can see things highlighted in our dashboards. We've reduced the time to action by about 20%.

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Afeez Olaboye - PeerSpot reviewer
IT security analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The custom classifications are one of the most valuable features. For instance, if we want to block the transfer of card details, there are many pre-built samples for different countries that we can easily use in Purview, eliminating the need to create our classifications which makes the work easier.

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FM
Cloud Architect at a marketing services firm with 11-50 employees

The most valuable feature is the tracking activity and device onboarding.

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Vundavalli Gowtham - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Analyst at LTIMINDTREE

My favorite features are eDiscovery and insider risk management, because these are the major threats to an organization that can't be easily traced.

Also, there are multiple rules within Purview related to cloud applications. Purview's major focus is on Microsoft Azure and its Microsoft cloud-related applications, such as Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, et cetera. They have created a set of rules and added workflows to the policies as well. That means we can directly add those particular cloud workflows to the policies. Alerts can be triggered and workflows implemented based on the rules that we set while creating a policy inside Purview.

We also use Copilot, the next generation of ChatGPT. If you ask it: "According to Purview, what were the DLP alerts that were generating today?" it will take just five seconds to generate the data—whatever is available in the backend of Purview. Copilot is integrated with Purview. If a person is using Purview but doesn't have any idea how to operate it—meaning they don't know how to search for alerts—they can easily ask Copilot. They can create a prompt. That way, a non-technical person can get the data.

Also, all the required security products are integrated with Purview, including endpoint DLP.

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SV
Data Architect at a venture capital & private equity firm with 501-1,000 employees

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.

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KP
Team Lead at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Albert Hoitingh - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Consultant Microsoft 365 Compliance at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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.   

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AR
Director IT enterprise architecture at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees

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. 

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CL
SharePoint Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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.

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ND
Senior Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1-10 employees

Microsoft Information Protection uses sensitivity labels to classify and protect sensitive information. MIP works together with Data Loss Prevention to prevent sensitive information from being leaked outside of the organization. MIP also helps to mitigate insider risk by preventing unauthorized users from accessing sensitive information.

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VO
Cloud Architect at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

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.

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LW
Solutions Architect at a non-tech company with self employed

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.

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CP
IT architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

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. 

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PN
INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND SECURITY CONTROL OFFICER at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The most valuable features vary from organization to organization.

The e-discovery search is useful. It gives good insights into mailboxes. You can even discover emails you can't see, such as those that have been deleted. It's helpful for discovering any email at all. 

The deep search, the ability to search for content no matter where it is located, is quite helpful as well.

It helps with compliance.

The solution can be used in multiple cloud environments. Some organizations are not just Microsoft-driven. It is able to integrate well with other applications. They can't be just limited to a Microsoft environment.

It can provide access to iOS, Microsoft, Android, SaaS, and other apps. They might manage it via Microsoft InTune. However, they can monitor or track information across a variety of platforms. 

The ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources is good. There are data connectors from the admin center to help you get information from non-Mircosoft data centers. That's handy for those not heavy on Microsoft.

It integrates well with Office and Microsoft Dynamics. We can use Exchange and One Drive. We can monitor data everywhere online. We can do everything from the Azure portal. It's easy to set up and configure everything from the Azure portal. You can also select or remove certain applications. For example, depending on your use case, if you want, you can, for example, turn off SharePoint. You can also set up and monitor for abusive words or discriminatory language as well.

The solution was built to take into account critical regulations from around the world. For credit card protection, for example, they have different templates that handle different regulation requirements, and you can work towards creating your own custom templates if none of them suit your criteria.

It's great for remediating policy violations. It can detect them, and the AI can scan documents and patterns, including keywords, and it can detect specific information as required. Whatever the users are trying to achieve, it can assist. 

It's not difficult to educate users to protect data. There are links that describe what you can do and how best to use it. 

We like that the solution has extended into Mac OS endpoints. It has fewer limitations now. It's a game-changer. In a single glance of the dashboard, we can see a single platform and view of every endpoint, no matter the OS. We don't have to use multiple vendors. It's much easier to have one product that can solve multiple issues on multiple platforms. It's helped us reduce the number of solutions and simplified the complexity of data governance. When you reduce to a single product, it becomes far less complex. 

The visibility is great. Most customers challenge me to learn more about the product as they are very interested in what products like Purview can do. Those in the control department have been giving good feedback. 

The real-time compliance is very good. 

It helps reduce insider threats. Customers have found it really helps to do that. They can track and manage the uploading of one drive and the movement to another. 

The insights clients have from a single dashboard - being able to monitor and track everything and even improve their security posture, are really helping clients a lot. 

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RS
Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The ease of integration with other Microsoft solutions is the most valuable feature. 

The availability of pre-designed policies tailored to specific geolocations and customer requirements is also a valuable feature.

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RY
Software Development Engineer at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Data segregation is the most valuable feature. This provides clear visibility into the hierarchy of data flow, including its destinations, loading points, and table updates.

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SK
Sr Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

My favorite Purview feature is auto-scanning. Once we set up Purview, we can automatically scan multiple data sources when new data comes into specific databases, like SQL and Oracle. We don't need to rediscover the new data or do anything manually because it automatically happens.

Purview also offers some additional integration capabilities if you use the Azure edition. We can seamlessly integrate tools like Azure Data Factory and Synapse Analytics to provide analytics and data transformation services in a customer's ETL pipeline. Organizations want to structure that data, so they use a basic ETL tool, which is commonly Azure Data Factory. Purview provides us with all the connectors needed to integrate these data tools. Another feature I like is data lineage. Purview tracks the data from its source to the destination. 

I haven't seen many challenges with integrating or supporting native Microsoft solutions like Office 365. We haven't come across anything in Microsoft 365 that's unsupported out of compliance with HIPAA regulations in the health sector or banking and finance regulations. It conforms to PCI DSS compliance methodology or GDPR.

We have multiple clients in the energy and banking sectors. Purview is vital in data platform implementation projects involving ETL transformations and model training. It's our default tool for governance when we're pitching our organization during presales. However, our smaller customers often don't need that much governance, or they're good with Azure Monitor. They may also prefer some other governance tool or might have an on-premise tool that they are already using. They don't want to change it despite the integration and features. Our big customers may have existing governance tools, but they want to use Purview because it offers additional features. It provides them security, compliance, and the flexibility to integrate with third-party and Azure native tools. 

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MS
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

The audit log has been a lifesaver for a lot of reasons. Historically, when using SaaS products, there were always questions about how the audit was going and whether we were sufficient out of the box. Purview has many capabilities available through centralized reporting that provide a view of a specific segment. 

The audit log capability enables us to observe things like changes in file sizes. At the same time, it simplifies management and control over the entire infrastructure, but it's specifically effective for Microsoft platforms. 

Purview's coverage of multi-cloud environments is essential. In today's world, we cannot stick to a single cloud provider because each one has a different set of benefits and advantages over the other. Many organizations typically try to interconnectivity and a cross-cloud platform, so it makes sense to have a single centralized compliance center and repository where you can track all activity at once. 

You can integrate iOS, Mac, and Android devices and data in other SaaS apps, which is important because we have a plethora of users using various devices across various operating systems. It makes a huge difference to have a centralized data solution for us. Purview natively integrates compliance across Azure Dynamics 365 and Office 365, which is quite important because Office 365 represents the new digital transformation. Purview covers the complete ecosystem, encompassing a lot of use cases and custom applications.

The solution takes into account critical regulations from around the world, which is vital for global organizations operating in countries that each have separate sets of rules and regulations, like GDPR. 

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PO
Works

I am impressed with the product's search and data catalog features. 

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JP
Innovation at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

You can set up automated dates to alert on internal data. 

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RR
Data & Analytics Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

What I like the most about Purview is the fact that you can really easily connect to data sources and retrieve the metadata in a batch manner. Instead of having to manually write down which tables and columns exist and then describe them, you can do that process in one go, by simply connecting to a source. That's a huge time-saver and a great benefit of Purview.

The solution takes into account critical data compliance regulations from around the world and that is one of the most important aspects of Purview. New laws are being enforced for data compliance and a lot of companies have a great interest in this feature of Purview. I think Microsoft is going to be focusing on that for the next couple of years to help organizations improve on data compliance.

In terms of reducing time-to-action, if you set up a clever rule that gets applied to your scan—it would just take some time to create that rule—in theory, whenever you are scanning your data you could identify something that is going on and act upon it. But I haven't seen that in practice yet.

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DC
Director of IT at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

One of the best features is the classification rules, especially the scan rule sets. They are really useful, especially when we need to understand the current data the company has to ensure that all the problematic data can be put under someone's responsibility.

Also, although it is not automatic, managing the business glossary terms is valuable. If we have to work with other people who are also data governors, it's important to understand how the current data catalog is going to work with the business. We can do it manually to flag the business terms that we would like to handle.

It is also important that Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments. Microsoft has built-in tools that can scan risky data that could be sensitive. It also provides connectors to other data platforms or clouds. These abilities are important for anyone who wants to see whether their organization has sensitive data, and how much.

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KB
Solution Specialist at LobsterPot Solutions

Purview has a pretty good interface and I'm satisfied with what the solution does and the price it's being sold at. It integrates well with Azure technologies. 

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Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Purview
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Purview. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
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