Streamlining enterprise risk management and compliance for the hybrid cloud
Microsoft is promising to help untangle enterprise data governance and security compliance with Microsoft Purview. The service is a rebranded and realigned enterprise-grade data governance and compliance solution comprising Azure Purview, Microsoft’s cloud-based data governance solution and the Microsoft 365 Compliance portfolio.
Microsoft Purview provides enterprises with asset visibility across their entire data estate. The service works across hybrid cloud infrastructures as well, helping businesses to manage data across different cloud environments, using different apps, and on different endpoints, according to the company.
Alym Rayani, GM, Compliance and Privacy Marketing at Microsoft, said that the fluid nature of today’s hybrid cloud and hybrid work have created blind spots for enterprise data visibility.
“Dark data, which organizations pay to store, but goes underutilized in decision making, is now growing at a rate of 62 percent per year.2 Even the virtual office has created the risk of new collaboration mediums opening doors to harassment, sensitive data leaks, and other workplace policy infractions. It’s a big digital world for any organization to try to manage,” said Rayani.
What’s more, the lines between risk management roles within businesses is changing, he said. Jessica Hawk, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Data, AI and Mixed Reality, framed this challenge facing businesses today.
“Traditional data management solutions rely on multiple unconnected, duplicative business processes, and a patchwork of software products augmented with custom code and point-wise integrations. Dozens of products are sometimes used together to address fragments of the data governance and compliance landscape, forcing Chief Data, Security, Compliance, and Legal Officers to stitch together solutions that don’t work together, expose infrastructure gaps, and are costly and complex to manage,” said Hawk.
Enterprise data, security, compliance and legal business processes and software often exist siloed one another, said Hawk. An absence of integrated compliance and governance solutions creates additional cost and risk, adds complexity and makes more work for enterprise IT. Research shows that 80% of businesses rely on multiple products to manage these functions, she said.
“The result is increased operations costs, ineffective data governance, poor security outcomes, failed compliance audits and damage to brand reputation. Additionally, as the threat landscape continues to evolve, the types of risks organizations face inevitably expand and extend well beyond the traditional cybersecurity risks,” she said.
This initial change is mainly cosmetic — Microsoft has rebranded separate products under a single umbrella, but Hawk said that the plan is to bring a a more unified platform to bear as well.
