Azure Purview: The New Data Service from Microsoft
The global shift to a hybrid work model is pushing companies to embrace ubiquitous connectivity. This has fostered collaboration from anywhere and in real-time but has also led to risks such as a massive increase in their digital footprint or data fragmentation.
Therefore, Microsoft has launched its latest enterprise-focused data platform aimed at data and risk management to support organizations in the secure development of hybrid work scenarios.
Microsoft Purview
Microsoft Purview was created with the objective of offering a set of solutions for companies to access a holistic and practical view of their information while avoiding cyber-attacks.
It combines the Microsoft 365 Compliance offering to give organizations the ability to easily access their data, secure it and provide risk solutions, as well as manage it end-to-end in compliance with regulations.
What is Azure Purview?
Azure Purview is a unified data governance solution that helps enterprises manage and govern their on-premises, multi-cloud, and SaaS data.
This service allows you to create an up-to-date holistic map of your data landscape, with varied options such as:
- Automated data discovery
- Confidential data classification
- End-to-end data lineage
Azure Purview Data Governance
The main purpose of Azure Purview is to enable you to manage and protect your data, and to allow your consumers to find valuable and trusted data.
This service automates the discovery of data by screening and classifying it as a service for your data asset resources. The governance of this data is based on 4 fundamental pillars:
- Automated data lineage detection, classification, and identification
- Unified map of data resources and their relationships for more effective data governance
- Glossary with technical and business search terms to facilitate data discovery
- Information on the location and movement of sensitive data across the data estate
In addition, one of the advantages of this service is that it is cloud-based, so the data remains in its current location. A copy of the metadata will be generated in Microsoft Purview, along with a location reference.
Once registered, additional metadata can be added and any user will be able to annotate descriptions, tags, or other documents.
If you want to discover how Microsoft Purview can help you detect, investigate and mitigate risks, join our workshop “Mitigate Compliance and Privacy Risks”.
Azure Purview Architecture
We have already seen how Microsoft Purview automates data analysis and classification. These are integrated into a holistic map of the data estate and on top of this map are applications specially designed to extend its capabilities: data map, data catalog, and data status insights.
Data Map
Microsoft Purview Data Map provides the foundation for data discovery and effective data governance.
It captures enterprise metadata and keeps it automatically updated through an intuitive and open user interface for developers to interact with thanks to the open-source Apache Atlas 2.0 API.
Data Catalog
With Data Catalog, technical and business users will be able to quickly and easily find the data they need through a filter-based search system with various terms, classifications, confidentiality tags, etc.
In addition, it provides data protection features, allows visual tracking of the lineage of data resources, transformation, and enrichment with various processing systems, consumption in analysis systems such as Power BI, etc.
Data Estate Insights
With Data Estate Insights, data stewards and data security managers can get a bird’s eye view and understand at a glance what data is actively being explored, where sensitive data is located, or how it is moving.
Azure Purview Tutorial
If you want to know more about how the platform works and how you can get more out of it, here is a video tutorial with all the details:
And if you want to know more about data services, check out our latest success stories.
