We live in a world where data is constantly multiplying. According to IDC, the global datasphere, which is the amount of data created, captured, or replicated, will double every four years.¹ As AI becomes more prevalent in various domains, organizations face the challenge of securing their growing data assets, while trying to activate their data to drive better business outcomes. We know data is the fuel that powers AI, but the real question is, is your data estate ready?

Fragmentation is in the way

The market has responded with dozens of products that address this challenge locally. Security and governance teams often bolt on security controls to protect individual data stores, having to stitch together a patchwork of solutions. This approach not only strains resources but is also ineffective. Security outcomes are worse—audits are failed and brand reputations are damaged.

In Microsoft’s most recent Data Security Index report, we found that 74% of organizations experienced some sensitive data exposure in the past year. Similarly, 68% of companies reported not being able to gather the right data insights, leading to poor data quality.² And even though organizations are quickly adopting generative AI, less than half of business leaders are confident in their organization’s ability to mitigate AI risks and adhere to its upcoming regulations.³ In the era of AI, before unlocking the power of data, organizations are looking for integrated security and governance solutions to help them confidently activate their data estate.

“In the age of data-driven decision making, organizations must recognize that governance practices are prerequisites for extracting trusted and responsible insights from their data. Without proper security and governance, analytics initiatives are at risk of producing unreliable or compromised results, which in turn negatively impacts business outcomes.”

—Chandana Gopal, Research Director, Enterprise Intelligence, IDC

Microsoft Purview—Seamlessly securing and confidently activating your data estate

The rise of generative AI and data democratization in the form of new analytics tools has made organizations look inward to adopt responsible analytics practices. At Microsoft, we believe that the key to responsible analytics is in adopting integrated solutions to secure your data, so you can confidently activate it. Security and governance are no longer an aftermath to data deployments, they are table stakes.

In 2022, we introduced Microsoft Purview, a comprehensive set of solutions that let you secure, govern, and ensure compliance across your data estate. Since then, the teams have worked tirelessly to bring this vision to life. With a unified approach, Microsoft Purview combines a variety of capabilities to allow customers to seamlessly secure, and confidently activate data, while adhering to regulatory requirements in one single solution built on a shared set of AI-powered data governance, classification, and audit logging, all under a unified management experience.

Seamlessly secure your data with built-in controls

With the rapid adoption of platforms such as Microsoft Fabric, we are excited to announce new innovations—all in preview—to help organizations adopt built-in data security across their most utilized systems. Starting today, we are enabling the following experiences:

• Built-in protections: Business users can now apply label-based protections—a familiar concept to the millions of users who employ Microsoft 365 labels and data loss prevention (DLP) policies, into Microsoft Fabric workloads. 
• Consistent enforcements: Admins can now extend their label-based protections across structured and unstructured data stores, including Microsoft Azure SQL, Microsoft Azure Data Lake Storage, and Amazon S3 buckets.
• Data risk detections: Data doesn’t move itself. People move data. Security teams can now ingest signals coming from Microsoft Fabric into the millions of signals across Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management.

Click here to watch the Microsoft Mechanics video to see this scenario in action!

These capabilities enable a confident approach to data democratization as organizations work on all types of data, whether sensitive or not, in a secure and responsible way. Learn more about how to seamlessly secure your data estate with our new capabilities.

Confidently activate your data with modern data governance

We are thrilled to introduce the new Microsoft Purview Data Governance experience. This new reimagined software as a service (SaaS) solution offers sophisticated yet simple business-friendly interaction, integration across your multicloud data estate, and actionable insights that help data leaders to responsibly unlock business value within their data estate. The new experience is:

• Business-friendly, federated, multicloud: Purpose-built for federated governance with efficient data office management and oversight that offers customizable business terms, roles, and policies for your multisource, multicloud data estate.
• Designed for business efficiency: Scan and search data assets and accelerate your practice with built-in templates, terms, and policy recommendations served up based on your metadata. Define data quality policies that follow the data through your governance practice.
• Actionable and informative: Aggregated actions and health insights help you put the practice in data governance by showcasing the overall health of your governed estate through built-in reports while interactive summarized actions help you improve the overall posture of your data governance practice.

Click here to learn more about our new modern Data Governance experience.

Expanding across your data estate

These innovations, all in public preview, are just the beginning of our journey to provide you with an integrated solution to secure and govern your data estate. We invite you to try them out and share your feedback with us. These capabilities will come in a new pay-as-you-go consumptive model, available at no additional cost during preview in the near term, with pricing details to follow in the future.

Please join us at the first ever Microsoft Fabric Community Conference in Las Vegas. If you’re attending, don’t miss the “Microsoft Purview for the Age of AI” keynote and our sessions on Microsoft Purview. Explore more details on how Microsoft Purview can help you and read our e-book “Crash Course in Microsoft Purview: A guide to securing and managing your data estate.”

Learn more

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on X at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹Worldwide Global DataSphere and Global StorageSphere Structured and Unstructured, DOC #US50397723, Data Forecast, 2023–2027 Market Forecast. June 13, 2023.

²2022 Chief Data Officer survey, Deloitte. September 2022.

³ISMG First Annual Generative AI Study: Business rewards vs. Security Risks. January 31, 2024.