Microsoft has announced a sweeping rebrand of its data governance and compliance products, pulling together data services from Azure Purview and Microsoft 365, to create a unified suite, 'Microsoft Purview'.
Purview will take the names of several Microsoft and 365 products and simply give them a unified identity. For example, 'Microsoft Compliance Manager' is now 'Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager' and 'Office 365 Data Connectors' becomes 'Microsoft Purview Data Connectors'.
The aim is to offer a simplified suite of services that help customers see their assets across an entire data estate, with safeguarding and management tools for cloud endpoints and apps, so that they can manage risks and regulatory compliance as smooth as possible.
Microsoft's thinking is around hybrid work environments which have created gaps and grey areas in data policies and security. Purview addresses those concerns, according to Microsoft, by patching together various tools that protect data for businesses and remote employees.
"Enabling an effective Zero Trust approach requires the ability to govern, protect, and understand data coming from an ever-widening array of endpoints," Microsoft said in a blog post.
Purview will also come with new services and integrations, such as the Data Loss Prevention service for macOS devices, which is now generally available. This adds protection to sensitive files on macOS Catalina (or higher) machines. There is also a 'coauthor' feature for Microsoft 365 applications that use encrypted documents on Android and iOS mobile devices. This also applies to Microsoft 365 apps like Excel, Outlook and Word, as well as Exchange and Teams.
What's more, next month the tech giant will also preview a 'multi-stage' data retention setting within Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management. This will allow labels to be applied to data at the end of a retention period, invoking new retention or deletion setting.
