Handling large volumes of complex data is often one of the greatest challenges of modern enterprises striving for innovation and adoption of technologies like AI. Factors such as increasing shift to hybrid and multi-cloud environments, legacy on-prem systems, and the ever-evolving regulatory environment add to the complexity, especially in terms of data security, compliance, and governance. Compounding this challenge further is the fragmented data and AI market and security vendor landscape.
Organizations find themselves walking on a tightrope with multiple disconnected tools and services that create vulnerabilities in data security and leave them exposed to a higher risk of cyber threats. As data breaches become more frequent and regulations like GDPR, DORA and CCPA impose new stringencies every day, IT teams must strike a balance between safeguarding data and providing timely access to authorized users.
According to IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the global average cost of a data breach was $4.88 million, a 10% increase from the previous year.
Against this backdrop, the need of the hour is a unified and strategic approach to balancing data innovation with security: one that simplifies data management while strengthening trust in the data itself. This is where Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Fabric come together to create a meaningful impact. Let’s take a closer look at the Microsoft Purview and Fabric integration in this blog post.
Microsoft Purview: Strengthening Data Governance and Compliance
Imagine this: A global retail company is preparing for an audit across its regional offices. However, the compliance team hits a wall as they delve deeper: access controls are inconsistent, ownership is unclear, and customer data is scattered across departments. Meanwhile, business users risk making poor decisions due to a lack of governed access to trusted data sources, often relying instead on outdated or unverified information. This is where Microsoft Purview can make a difference.
Microsoft Purview integrates data security, governance, and compliance for the AI-driven era, enabling comprehensive data protection throughout an organization’s digital landscape. Built on leading industry capabilities, it provides robust data lineage tracking and audit logging technologies, empowering Data Security Teams and Compliance Teams to effectively trace data flow and prevent unauthorized access.
| Focus Areas | Tools under Microsoft Purview |
|---|---|
| Data Security | Information Protection, Data Loss Prevention, Insider Risk Management, Adaptive Protection |
| Data Governance | Unified Catalog (Curation, Discovery, Governed Access), Data Management (Data Quality, MDM, and Health Controls) |
| Data Compliance | Compliance Manager, eDiscovery and Audit, Communication Compliance, Data Lifecycle Management, Records Management |
Microsoft Fabric: A Modern Data Foundation for Real-time Analytics and AI Innovation
Microsoft Fabric is a comprehensive data platform, with a pre-integrated and optimized ecosystem, enabling data teams to collaborate and work more efficiently. All workloads within Fabric operate in unison, without the web of infrastructure and configuration complexities typically associated with data platforms, allowing teams to focus on more strategic tasks. It enables the ingestion of structured and unstructured data in any format into OneLake (Fabric’s data lake) and provides access to third-party tools.
Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Fabric Integration: Unifying Analytics and Governance
By integrating Microsoft Fabric’s powerful analytical capabilities with Microsoft Purview’s data governance and security features, organizations can rely on a unified platform for discovering, classifying, safeguarding, and managing data at scale. This integrated approach enables better collaboration across CISO and CDO teams, ensuring organization-wide compliance. Companies can now advance their AI and analytics initiatives with confidence, knowing their data is secure, compliant, and well-governed.
Here’s how Fabric and Purview together build a fortress of advanced analytics and data security for businesses:
- Role-Based Access
This functionality allows companies to define roles and manage access across all layers of Fabric, including domains, workspaces, and items.
- Preventing Data Loss
- Fabric and Purview provide complementary catalogs that are advantageous for both data teams and business users. OneLake Catalog provides a unified view of data within Fabric’s data lake, while Purview’s Unified Catalog governs data across the enterprise, including outside Fabric. They work synchronously to provide top-quality data for organizations. Features like Data Quality Rules and Deep Data Quality Scans allow data officers to scan data and assess whether a particular dataset meets standards, to ensure responsible AI innovation and business usage.
- The Information Protection Tool in Purview offers Sensitivity Labels to classify and label sensitive data uniformly across the organization. Users can classify and label data right in the Lakehouse, enabling continuity of protection when this data is accessed further by several teams for modeling and analytics.
- Microsoft Purview’s Data Loss Prevention (DLP) helps safeguard sensitive information such as PII and credit card data by enforcing policies and controls that prevent excessive sharing. Data owners gain visibility into data flow across the organization and can act on alerts when policy is violated.
- Insider Risk Management
The Insider Risk Management (IRM) tool in Purview assesses potential risks within the organization, such as data leaks and policy violations in Fabric, and assigns a risk scores and alerts, enabling prompt action on high-risk scenarios. - Cybersecurity Support
Risk reports from IRM can be sent to Microsoft Defender XDR, so that teams can better distinguish internal incidents from external cyberattacks. This also helps develop better response strategies against potential threats.
- Compliance with Global Standards
Implementing robust data governance and security frameworks through Microsoft Purview helps ensure that an organization’s data policies are compliant with global standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, EUDB, ISO certifications, and other industry-specific regulatory requirements. It also enables better control over data storage and helps meet data residency requirements. In case of any incident, Microsoft Purview Audit supports investigation and forensics by providing automatically logged user activity data.
Starting Your Data Security Journey with Microsoft Fabric + Microsoft Purview
Microsoft Purview and Fabric together build a strong foundation for your organization’s data estate. With built-in security and AI-readiness at its core, the Microsoft Purview and Fabric integration empowers businesses to stay on top of their data game and harbor AI innovation.
As a trusted Microsoft Implementation Partner, KANINI helps businesses become both AI-ready and data-responsible to achieve positive business outcomes.
If you’re exploring cloud data governance tools and want to learn how the Purview-Fabric integration supports data loss prevention, security and compliance within a robust data ecosystem, talk to our experts today.
Author
Prashant Sharma
Prashant Sharma is the Data Analytics & AI Practice Lead at KANINI, with over two decades of experience in solution development and delivery. He leverages deep expertise in data analytics and GenAI to lead transformative projects, mentor agile teams, and drive data-driven innovation across industries.
