As hybrid work becomes the new norm, organizations face evolving challenges in their security strategies. The shift from office-centric security to cloud environments demands a focus on securing identities and protecting valuable data. Wesley Venstermans, Squad Lead Audit & Compliancy at SecWise, offers insights on effectively safeguarding your organization’s crown jewels — its most valuable data. In this blog, we delve into the significance of data security and explore Microsoft Purview’s comprehensive Information Protection and Data Loss Prevention capabilities. 

Elevating Data Security: A “Zero Trust” Approach 

In our previous blog, we talked about the importance of compliancy, now we will take a look at the first steps in securing your data. 

Leading research and consulting firms, such as Gartner and Forrester, advocate for the “zero trust” principle, where data takes center stage, promoting a mindset of trusting nothing, verifying everything. This approach assumes a proactive stance against potential threats, considering the possibility of being hacked. To fortify data security, organizations should establish robust data loss prevention and information protection strategies. 

Microsoft Purview’s Data Security

Microsoft offers a comprehensive information protection solution through Purview’s Data Security capabilities, which safeguard sensitive data from unauthorized access or leaks. This suite of tools assists organizations in identifying, classifying, and protecting sensitive data. Let’s explore the various aspects in detail. 

Information Protection 

Purview’s Information Protection empowers organizations to intelligently classify and protect sensitive data without hindering productivity. This can be achieved manually or automatically. The automated approach employs technology to search for sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information or confidential product documentation, and automatically applies the appropriate classification label. 

 Sensitivity labels play a vital role in data classification, enabling organizations to assign sensitivity levels to data based on its confidentiality. For instance, confidential customer data can be labeled to ensure restricted access to authorized personnel. These labels provide valuable insights into data usage patterns, allowing organizations to implement targeted encryption and access restrictions, further enhancing the protection of sensitive data.

Data Loss Prevention 

Data loss prevention is a critical component of information protection. Sensitivity labels serve as a fundamental tool in preventing data loss. By implementing data loss prevention policies based on sensitivity labels, organizations can monitor and prevent unintentional sharing, transmission, or access to sensitive data. This significantly reduces insider risks, mitigating the potential external sharing of sensitive data by employees within the organization. Implementing sensitivity labels also aids compliance with regulations such as GDPR, FISP, and PCI-DSS. 

Sensitivity labels can be applied to various data types, including emails, office files and even your Teams meetings and calendar items. The level of restrictions and rules can be tailored to an organization’s specific needs. It is essential to balance the implementation of rules and restrictions with the operational feasibility of the organization, ensuring employees can perform their tasks effectively. 

Enabling a Smooth Transition 

To facilitate a seamless transition to this approach to data security, SecWise follows best practices and conducts an initial assessment tailored to each organization’s unique requirements. This assessment includes evaluating data location, handling processes, and identifying areas for improvement. Through interviews, workshops, and observation, SecWise gains insights from various stakeholders and key data users within the organization. A roadmap is then created, outlining the steps for the customer journey, which includes analogously handling sensitive data. Incremental implementation ensures business operations remain unaffected. 

In Conclusion 

Microsoft Purview’s Information Protection and Data Loss Prevention are vital components of a robust data security strategy. By leveraging sensitivity labels to classify data and implementing data loss prevention policies, organizations can significantly enhance data security. Stay tuned for our upcoming blogs where we’ll delve deeper into mitigating insider risks.  

To initiate your own data security journey, reach out to sales manager quickly, or fill in the contact form.