Data defines an organisation’s ability to innovate safely. It is the most valuable asset a business has, with the ability to enhance operations, build the foundations for AI, and drive commercial success.
Every transaction, interaction, message and AI prompt generates data. We’re creating more data than we ever have done. With each touchpoint, more data is created and therefore needs cataloguing, storing, and managing. How on earth do we keep up with the 402 million terabytes of data that are created every day?
There’s someone we’d like you to meet…
What is Microsoft Purview?
Microsoft Purview is an all-in-one solution for data governance, security, risk and compliance, and enables data transformation that can fuel innovation. In 2026, Purview has expanded significantly to become Microsoft’s unified governance and AI‑risk management platform, underpinning safe adoption of Copilot and custom AI agents across organisations. It helps organisations comprehensively manage their data, and is made up of a wide range of features that allow for the discovery, classification, and management of data across on-premises systems, multi-cloud environments, and Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms.
Microsoft Purview’s most widely adopted and impactful features live directly inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Native capabilities such as sensitivity labels, automatic data classification and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) apply protection consistently across Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and Windows endpoints. This ensures that Purview provides everyday, real‑world data security as well as visibility across the wider data estate.
With Purview, businesses can ensure that their data is correctly governed, its quality is managed, risks are mitigated, and that generative AI applications meet industry and legal regulatory requirements. Microsoft has explicitly positioned Purview as a core pillar of the Copilot Control System, the framework used to manage security for Copilot and AI agents.
What are the key components of Microsoft Purview?
Microsoft Purview is a collection of tools, all working together to provide a holistic approach to data governance, security and compliance.
Data Security
Purview provides a comprehensive range of data security solutions, including Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management, Data Loss Prevention, Information Protection, Insider Risk Management, Data Security Investigations and Copilot in Microsoft Purview. These tools are designed to identify and safeguard sensitive information, ensuring thorough data security throughout your organisation.
In addition, Purview provides protections for generative AI apps. It tracks AI activity, prevents data loss and ensures compliance with best practice.
Information Protection
Microsoft Purview’s Information Protection engine provides consistent, automated, and context‑aware security across the Microsoft 365 stack. Through sensitivity labels, encryption policies, data residency controls, and retention rules, organisations can protect files, chats, emails, images and even AI‑generated content. These capabilities operate natively across all M365 applications, ensuring that users can collaborate freely while Purview handles protection quietly in the background.
Data Governance
The platform features integrated data governance solutions that oversee data services across on-premises, multi-cloud, and SaaS environments – including Azure storage services, Power BI, SQL Server, Hive, Amazon S3, and others. Tools such as Microsoft Purview Data Catalogue, Data Estate Insights, Data Map, Data Policy, and Data Sharing empower organisations to effectively map, identify, manage, and secure their data.
Data Sharing and Policy
Purview facilitates secure data sharing both within and between organisations, while also allowing centralised management of data sharing relationships. The Data Policy app streamlines the management of data access across multiple sources, ensuring both security and compliance.
Data Insights
This is a vital tool for governance stakeholders, such as Chief Data Officers, with a comprehensive overview of the data estate, offering actionable insights into governance gaps, data usage, sensitivity and compliance. It features metrics, reporting, and visualisation tools to track and improve data governance policies, ensuring effective resource allocation and adherence to regulatory requirements.
Purview AI Hub
The Purview AI Hub provides a central workspace for monitoring, governing, and securing AI usage across your organisation. It offers visibility into how AI tools, such as Microsoft Copilot and third‑party generative AI services, access and process sensitive data, and enables you to set and enforce policies that minimise AI‑related data risks. The AI Hub helps organisations adopt AI responsibly while meeting emerging regulatory and compliance requirements.
Risk and Compliance
Microsoft Purview’s risk and compliance solutions help organisations manage compliance risks and meet regulatory requirements through a suite of tools. These include Microsoft Purview Audit for tracking user activities, Communication Compliance for monitoring communications, Compliance Manager for assessing compliance posture, Data Lifecycle Management for handling data from creation to disposal, and eDiscovery for managing electronically stored information relevant to legal cases. These tools ensure secure, compliant data handling throughout the data lifecycle.
Data Catalogue
This is the central component of the Purview platforms. Effective data cataloguing allows users to discover and search for data assets across the business, accessing only the information they should be able to in line with a just-enough-access policy.
Data Map
This feature automates data discovery by scanning and classifying assets across your data estate, providing a holistic view of your data landscape. It serves as the foundation for data discovery and governance, facilitating easy and efficient management of enterprise data.
Additionally, Microsoft Purview Data Quality enables assessment and recommendations for improvement to data quality within business domains. It provides AI-driven insights to increase the reliability and confidence in the data found in the data catalogue, helping organisations to become AI ready.
By leveraging these seven capabilities, businesses can ensure their data is managed effectively, protected adequately, and utilised fully. Whether you are addressing regulatory compliance, improving data quality, or enabling secure data sharing, Microsoft Purview offers the tools and insights needed to transform your data governance strategy.
What are the core implications of Microsoft Purview?
We’ve covered what it does, but what effect does it have on your business? And especially why does it matter in 2026 more than ever?
Unified Data Governance
Microsoft Purview provides a centralised platform for managing data governance across the entire data estate. This unification simplifies the process of ensuring data quality, security, and compliance, eliminating data silos and reducing the complexities associated with managing disparate data sources.
Protecting Data in Transit
Sensitivity labels and DLP ensure that protection stays attached to data, whether it’s shared, copied, or surfaced by AI. Purview further strengthens this by continuously inspecting data paths across apps, devices and AI interactions. This ensures that sensitive information remains encrypted and governed even as it moves through multi‑cloud and hybrid environments.
AI‑Aware Governance
Purview applies controls not just to files, but to AI prompts, responses, and agent activity, helping prevent sensitive data leakage into generative AI tools. It also provides visibility into how AI models use and reference organisational data, offering audit trails, risk scoring and policy enforcement that align with emerging AI governance standards and regulatory expectations.
Better Collaboration and Data Sharing
Purview facilitates better collaboration by making it easier for teams to discover and understand data. The data catalogue and business glossary ensure that everyone in the organisation speaks the same data language, fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making and reaping the rewards that come with that.
How Microsoft Purview can benefit your industry
Purview isn’t just a toy for your IT team to play with. It’s a platform that will impact your entire organisation, shaping the way data is managed and moved in your teams, departments and geographies. No matter what industry you operate within, there’s a Purview use case for you.
Finance
Businesses operating within the UK’s financial services industry must comply with regulations such as the UK Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Senior Managers and Certification Regime, and GDPR. Microsoft Purview helps FSI firms automate data discovery, classification, and lineage tracking, ensuring that all regulatory requirements are met. This automation not only reduces the risk of non-compliance, but also minimises the effort required for compliance reporting.
Healthcare
With the NHS being the world’s largest publicly funded healthcare service, imagine the amount of patient data, research data, test result data… this list is endless. It’s no doubt that cybersecurity and privacy is at the forefront of their business decisions, and Purview allows healthcare providers to classify and protect patient data, ensuring compliance with GDPR and other healthcare regulations. By providing visibility into data access and usage, Purview helps prevent data breaches and ensures that patient information remains confidential, while still being able to use it to make critical decisions across the organisation.
Manufacturing
The UK manufacturing industry is among the strongest in the world, bringing in £224 billion to the UK economy each year. Its complex data ecosystem – with IoT data, supply chain information and customer insights – means its organisations stand to benefit hugely from Purview. The platform enables these companies to create a unified data governance framework, improving data quality and operational efficiency. With better data insights, manufacturers can optimise their production processes, reduce downtime, and enhance product quality.
Retail
Retailers rely on data to understand customer preferences, manage inventory, and optimise marketing strategies. ASOS, a leading global retailer, recently joined forces with Microsoft to utilise Azure and its AI capabilities to power its digital platforms and support new data-led and innovative workstreams. Purview’s data cataloguing and business glossary make it easier for retail businesses to discover and analyse data, driving data-driven decision-making. By ensuring data accuracy and consistency, Purview helps retailers enhance customer experiences and improve business outcomes.
Non-Profits
While charities must comply with regulations such as GDPR, the Charity Governance Code, and the requirements set by the Charity Commission, they also rely heavily on their data to understand donor behaviour, optimise fundraising strategies, and measure the impact of their programs. Microsoft Purview plays a crucial code in helping charities manage these dual priorities, by automating key compliance tasks like data discovery, classification, and auditing, while ensuring that charities handle sensitive donor and beneficiary information securely and transparently. Automating these processes reduces the risk of data breaches and non-compliance, but also frees up valuable resources to focus on critical fundraising activities and strategy.
What next?
Further your Purview knowledge by registering to attend our webinar “Securing the AI Frontier with Microsoft Purview DSPM” at 10:00 on Thursday 12th March.
During this hour webinar we will be covering how to protect sensitive data as your teams adopt Copilot and Generative AI. You’ll be hearing from Microsoft’s Security & Compliance Solution Engineer Karim Fayad, who will cover:
- Why traditional security models fall short for AI
- How the Microsoft Purview AI Hub gives you visibility of AI risk
- Preventing sensitive data leakage through AI prompts
- How sensitivity labels follow data through Copilot
- Using audit and risk trends for compliance and monitoring
- A practical deployment path for DSPM for AI
Whether you’re preparing for Copilot, responding to regulatory pressure, or simply want confidence that sensitive data isn’t being overshared, get in touch and we can help support your Microsoft Purview journey.
Sound good? Get in touch.
