Microsoft Purview Data Governance Reviews

I have utilized the Data Catalog feature. It helped manage and discover data effectively.

The DLP part and the AI related ones are the most valuable features. I mostly appreciate their automated data discovery.

Compared to Big-ID, Microsoft Purview Data Governance looks complicated to me. I do not feel it has a good user-level UI. The interface feels a little complicated compared to Big-ID.

I did not appreciate the configuration part. It felt complex, whereas when I went for a Big-ID demo, the interface looked better and was easier to understand for any user.

I have been working with Microsoft Purview Data Governance for around six months.

I have not done the configuration myself, as some of my team members have handled it.

We have not used other products or particular components, such as their data discovery one regarding customizable dashboards and reporting tools.

I would evaluate the role-based access control as good. I just went for a demo of Big-ID. If it is for AWS or Google Cloud, I would recommend Big-ID. If it is for Azure, then I would recommend Microsoft Purview Data Governance. My review rating for this product is 6-7.

We are currently working with Microsoft Purview Data Governance and other Microsoft products. We are using Microsoft Purview Data Governance.

I like the integrated tool and integrated benefits in Microsoft Purview Data Governance. I have actually used the Data Catalog feature. Data Catalog helps to manage and discover data effectively. I have leveraged automated data discovery in this scope.

The features in the actual data governance could be improved, and I think there is room for improvement in the product.

We haven't used role-based access control in a complex way; it's somehow embedded into the documents, but I don't know the details.

I don't know about the customizable dashboards in the product and whether they help to speed up the process.

We have been using Microsoft Purview Data Governance for about 1.5 years.

I would rate the technical support of Microsoft as seven out of ten.

Positive

It's easy to deploy Microsoft Purview Data Governance.

It requires assistance; I could not do it all by myself.

Five people took part in the deployment of the solution.

My main use cases for Microsoft Purview Data Governance are for communication compliance and DLP. We're starting to get into the data side of it, mainly focusing on communication compliance and DLP. I use Microsoft Purview Data Governance for data loss protection.

Microsoft Purview Data Governance gives a very good overview of our full environment. It also has integrations with Microsoft Sentinel and all the other tools, including Defender. I appreciate how they've recently added those portals at the bottom of Purview, making it just a one-click shot to switch.

Microsoft Purview Data Loss Protection is effective at remediating policy violations. It's catching all the things we need to catch.

Microsoft Purview Data Governance can connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices and data in other SaaS apps. This is important because it gives us visibility or a 360-degree view of everything we need to do. We appreciate Microsoft. We've an E5 license, so we're heavily invested in Microsoft and appreciate what they do for us.

Microsoft Purview Data Governance delivers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments, including AWS and GCP. It integrates with many different cloud providers, and we have many legacy systems. That overview is really beneficial.

It is very important to us that Microsoft Purview Data Governance was built taking into account critical regulations from around the world, as we are highly regulated. Since we are in Canada, and Microsoft is based in the US, it is beneficial to know we are able to comply with our regulations.

Microsoft Purview Data Governance enables us to show our compliance in real time. We're highly regulated. It is excellent for auditing purposes and being able to go back as far as we need to. It's also beneficial that we can change the date timeline between 7 days to 10 years.

The features of Microsoft Purview Data Governance that I value most include communication compliance. It provides visibility into how people are using Copilot for Microsoft and gives insight into risks and sensitive conversations. It helps with investigations when personnel decisions need to be made.

Microsoft Purview Data Governance has helped my company by finding insider risks, ensuring data loss prevention, and achieving compliance to make sure everybody is compliant.

I found it challenging to configure Microsoft Purview Data Governance initially. With the integrations of Microsoft Copilot and 365, we don't have that enabled, but it would be beneficial to us to have that enabled, so that I could ask questions.

One of the challenges is that Microsoft changes things so quickly that sometimes you're just playing catch-up, and sometimes these changes aren't communicated effectively.

I have been using Microsoft Purview Data Governance for 18 months.

We've never had any issues with it going down.

We haven't had any issues with onboarding new integrations.

It is lacking a bit because I've opened some tickets, and it's taken months to resolve, or I've never even had them resolved.

I would give them an eight out of ten because they're doing adequately, but there have been some challenges.

Positive

Before choosing Microsoft Purview Data Governance, we used Proofpoint.

It was pretty seamless.

The biggest return on investment when using Microsoft Purview Data Governance is all the governance, providing that 360-degree view of everything going on.

It's not cheap. I'm not exactly sure how much our license costs, but it is very expensive.

Before choosing Microsoft Purview Data Governance, we considered another solution, but we're an agency of the government, so everything we procure has to be bid on, and one of our third-party vendors integrated it and put in the bid.

I would rate Microsoft Purview Data Governance an eight out of ten. I am not giving it a perfect score because there are still some gaps, and there are areas where they're still working.

Microsoft Purview Data Governance protects against data loss, helps prevent accidental data sharing, ensures the right people have access to data and helps remediate data issues.

One way that Microsoft Purview has benefited our organization is by preventing data leakage, which saves the company money on fines and protects its reputation.

The feature that I find most valuable is its ability to block unintended data sharing, like forcing unencrypted emails to be encrypted. We're evolving technologically, so people aren't always working from their desks. Our people are on the move. We have data everywhere. For example, in airlines, they're mobile and working from one door to another. They can't carry a computer from one station to another. That's where a lot of airlines use iPads. Securing and integrating iPads is helpful. 

Purview's data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments is essential because data is everywhere, and all data is important. We could have Social Security numbers in the cloud or on-prem, so it's crucial to protect them all.

The ability to consider regulations around the world is essential due to outsourcing. Many companies outsource to India or China, so it's important to protect data wherever it is. Purview provides visibility through its data classification module, which allows us to scan our environment and let us know where that sensitive data is.

One area for improvement is better documentation on what is working and what is not, as well as what features are allowed depending on your licensing model. It's essential to know if a feature isn't working due to missing licenses.

I have been using Microsoft Purview Data Governance for the last four years.

There are some bugs in how long it takes policies to apply. It can take seven days to 24 hours to determine whether a policy is effective.

The product is scalable and works across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments, but better performance could be useful.

I would rate Microsoft customer service seven out of 10. More updated documentation would improve our results, as Microsoft is always changing online, and the documentation doesn't update as quickly as the console.

Neutral

My company is a consulting company, and we have worked with various products. One such company is Varonis, which does similar functions but doesn't offer the one-stop-shop solution that Microsoft provides.

We are the consultants, so we are responsible for the deployment of the solution.

We don't typically see direct ROI since we're a consulting company. However, clients benefit from using a one-stop-shop solution, increasing their visibility across different platforms.

Licensing is frustrating due to multiple modules and licenses. The feature might be available in the console, but it won't work without the proper license, creating confusion.

I rate the Microsoft Purview Data Governance seven out of 10. 

Neutral

We are labeling our documents, and based on those labels, encryption is applied depending on how sensitive the data is. Documents that leave our organization are automatically encrypted.

We plan to use Purview for data loss protection, but we aren't there yet. That's the next phase of our rollout. We're setting up governance, identification, and classification before moving to DLP. We have started some pilot groups within Teams to test how it will block PHI personal health information that's transmitted via text or voice in a transcript. We've seen some success, but it also blocks a lot of things that it shouldn't. It's a matter of fine-tuning.

We're going to have the benefit of being able to roll out Copilot more securely, but we're not there quite yet.

The sensitivity labeling is the most valuable feature because it is the foundation for automating the encryption process and ensuring proper data handling across the organization.

It is helpful that Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices because you need to be able to govern the ecosystem no matter where your data is. Purview's consideration of critical regulations from around the world is crucial because we operate globally, so we need to adjust how data is handled for our employees in other countries.

We haven't really gotten too far into it to identify areas for improvement just yet.

We haven't been using it for long. We are currently in the pilot phase, gradually rolling it out. We've been building the policies, and the rollout to a pilot group started three weeks ago.

I couldn't really say about the stability so far, but I have confidence in it.

It's definitely scalable. With automation, you can label five documents or 50,000 with the same amount of clicks. It handles all the data you can throw at it.

I rate Microsoft customer service 10 out of 10. Support is a little slow, but it's very beneficial. They're skillful people who know what they're doing in their space. Some unforeseen speed bumps along the way have slowed things down. It's nor something that I would be mad about, but I wish the project would be done by now so we could get our Copilots all rolled up.

We have a good rapport with them and get along well. We can candidly talk to them about things and ask for help. They're always happy to do what they need to to get the answers we need. 

Positive

We used some built-in legacy permissions and tools for file management, along with Excel's advanced features, which are now part of Microsoft Purview.

It's been a slow process. We're taking our time and working with a partner. It's been slow, but this is one of those cases where that's necessary.

We worked with a consultant named Lighthouse. They've been very beneficial, skillful, and know their field well. Despite some unforeseen speed bumps slowing the project, their expertise has been valuable.

We're working with a Microsoft partner to carefully create labels and test all the features and policies behind the labels. We rolled it out to our first pilot group. We have a test SharePoint site that we're using alongside that. Once we have more data and and feedback from the pilot group, we'll expand that company-wide.

The experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing was smooth, as most Purview functionalities were included in the e5 licenses we migrated to for other reasons.

We did not evaluate any other solutions as we were acquiring an E5 license, which integrated Purview features without the need for exploring alternatives.

I rate Microsoft Purview Data Governance eight out of 10. Once you start using it and see what it can do, it's really intuitive.

I use Microsoft Purview Data Governance for data governance and data loss prevention. Its main purpose is to protect the data from end users and provide data governance.

Microsoft Purview Data Governance helps us by reporting on and auditing data leaks and breaches. 

One important feature is data security, which both end users and the organization seek. Microsoft Purview offers data protection across a multi-cloud and multi-platform environment.

It's critical that Purview connects to iOS, Mac, and Android. We could only secure some of our data if it only covered Windows. It provides a comprehensive view of the entire ecosystem's threats and compliance in real time. It's very easy to use.

Purview's compliance features are crucial. We have to match some cases in other countries to our own to comply with the policies, procedures, and regulatory frameworks here. 

Although there is currently nothing that I feel needs immediate improvement, I appreciate the announcements for new features. A watermark feature or similar tools to help enhance security for end users could be added.

I have been using Microsoft Purview Data Governance for around six to seven months.

Microsoft Purview Data Governance is stable.

Scalability is good with Microsoft Purview Data Governance.

I rate Microsoft support six out of 10. The standard support is acceptable, but sometimes it doesn't respond fast enough. Overall, it doesn't meet our expectations.

Neutral

I have not used a different solution before Microsoft Purview.

The initial setup was not particularly easy, as it required maintaining the architecture to integrate user capabilities.

I did not use an integrator, reseller, or consultant for the implementation.

One of the best offerings by Microsoft is providing multiple solutions with one vendor. This has allowed us to maintain various solutions efficiently.

I did not evaluate another solution before Microsoft Purview.

I rate Microsoft Purview Data Governance nine out of 10.

Our primary use case for Microsoft Purview Data Governance was to classify documents and ensure that people were getting the information they were supposed to. We initially adopted it internally before working with customers. We use it for both internal purposes and as a selling point.

It has helped to ensure that employees don't access content they shouldn't and has improved our organizational processes. Familiarity with Microsoft Purview also helps us sell the product.

The visibility has helped tremendously. We can see where documents are stored and the security that has been applied. It helps to see where things are from one place.

The reporting is excellent. Limiting what people can see is also valuable, especially when tagging documents. Purview's ability to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices is critical. This is a huge selling point because people use various devices in their companies. 

The solution's multi-cloud capabilities will be increasingly essential as we expand into AWS. We don't do a lot of GCP, but using Purview as a single point of truth is huge. 

The fact that Purview is built based on critical regulations is crucial because we deal with so many kinds of customers. We have to talk to them about what they can and can't do according to their requirements and the regulations they're under.

Auto-tagging should be available at lower levels of licensing. Right now, a high level of licensing is needed for auto-tagging, and this feature should be made available at a lower license level.

I have been using Microsoft Purview Data Governance for at least five years.

The stability is great.

Scalability is also great. We haven't encountered any issues.

I try to avoid opening tickets with Microsoft due to long response times, which is frustrating. We tend to use Microsoft documentation and Microsoft Learn instead.

Positive

Previously, we relied on permissions in Windows on file shares, but Microsoft Purview works much better.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward, but manual tagging was challenging because people needed to get used to it.

We did not use an integrator.

We don't specifically look at ROI in a traditional sense. What's crucial is keeping information secure and accessible.

The auto-tagging feature should be available at a lower licensing level.

We did not evaluate other solutions. Microsoft Purview's inclusion in licensing made it an obvious choice.

I rate Microsoft Purview Data Governance eight out of 10. It loses points because auto-tagging is only available at higher licensing levels.

I'm an IT consultant, and I have several clients ranging from small businesses and start-ups to large FTSE 100, multi-billion-pound companies. I've implemented Purview from a data security perspective, such as aggregating data using the DLP and AIP (Azure Information Protection). The point of Purview is to enable companies to have a grip on their data and create rules, policies, and visibility around that.

One of the biggest positives of Purview is the visibility you gain into your estate. Once you start labelling data, you can get reports and information about where your confidential and critical data are. It gives you far more visibility than you would have if you tried to do things manually.

While Purview doesn't reduce the number of systems you need, it covers the functionality of data security that, otherwise, would have to be done by a third-party product. And it probably would not only be one third-party solution. Only something like Varonis would be really comparable, in my experience.

By avoiding the need for a third-party product for data security, because it's a bolt-on with the 365 licenses—E3 or E5—it absolutely saves you money.

The labelling is the most valuable feature for the companies I'm installing it for. Some of them have several thousand staff, and their concerns are around confidential or private data being shared. The labels and the policies involved with them give them that initial visibility.

It's absolutely important that it covers multi-cloud and multi-platform environments, including AWS, GCP, et cetera. If you're going to have a DLP solution, it needs to cover as much as possible. A solution that doesn't integrate with other systems isn't going to work for most companies. That's one of the reasons I like Purview: you can plug in and use APIs to connect to other systems and scan other data.

As for connecting to iOS, Mac, and Android devices, the more the better in terms of what Purview can do from a connection aspect.

And Purview's natively integrated compliance across Azure Dynamics and Office 365 is absolutely essential. It's really good. A lot of my clients are Office 365 customers, and they hold a lot of their data in the 365 tenant. It makes Purview an obvious choice for customers with that environment and setup. Any company that uses Microsoft 365 should use Purview to some degree.

Another aspect that is very important is that the solution was built taking into account critical regulations from around the world. Some of my clients are huge financial organizations, and they need to implement things like ISO security, GDPR, and financial scanning on things like credit card numbers. It's really good.

I've also implemented the DLP policies, settings, scanning, et cetera, as well as rules around that. For example, when data is encrypted when it's sent or shared, there is no forwarding of emails.

There are negatives to the compliance aspect of Purview in that you get a lot of false positives with some of the native scanning and rules in the platform. A lot of them need tweaking to get a more realistic handle on what data there is.

Also, I wouldn't say that the remediation of policy violations is particularly great. It has improved, but it's not very easy to dig into things if there is a policy violation. A lot of them are false-positives.

It has helped reduce the time to action on insider threats, but there are quite a lot of false positives there as well. Overall, it's a work in progress for Microsoft.

I would also like to see pre-built reporting. The dashboard isn't really that intuitive. It would be good to have more intuitive dashboards that you can drill down into or even customizable dashboards.

I've been using Purview for about three years, almost since the functionality was available at the beginning.

The stability of Purview is almost faultless. It's a nine out of 10.

The scalability is very good—nine out of 10 again. Once all the data is in Purview, you don't need to worry about scalability. It would only apply when you need to bring in a new integration or application, and that is fairly easy to do.

The support is not particularly good. I've probably had some more advanced issues than the average person, due to having deployed it into a more mature config, and I found that on two or three occasions, when I had an issue or question around Purview, I really didn't have a good person at Microsoft talk to me about it. It needed to go through quite a lot of escalation to get to someone with advanced skill for it.

Neutral

I've installed it on-premises, hybrid, and in the cloud. It works best when it's all in the cloud. The initial deployment is really straightforward. It's one of the easiest products I've deployed from Microsoft.

There is maintenance involved; policies and alerts need to be reviewed. The whole data security aspect is an ongoing process.

I do it myself.

We have seen ROI because we're not having to pay for third-party scanning or security on our files.

In addition, while you can't measure it, we know our data is at less risk. We have a lot more confidence in that regard.

Also, potentially, you don't need as many security staff to monitor it, with the possibility of savings from that.

The pricing is reasonable because it's part of the 365 E3 or E5 license you buy.

What I would like to see is that Microsoft Priva, which is an add-on to Purview, be absorbed into the solution for a smaller sized consumer/company.

I have also used Varonis as an alternative. The biggest difference is that Varonis is a standalone product, whereas Purview is built into Office 365. That's the biggest positive for Purview, in comparison. That makes it easier, with Purview, to customize and switch on the scanning of data without having to go through rigorous processes to capture data, as is the case with Varonis.

Get someone who is experienced in deploying it.

Purview's data connector platform for ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources is improving fast. Originally, there wasn't as much there as I'd have hoped for, but the platform has been developed heavily in the last 18 months, and it's pretty good now. When you can see the apps from third parties in the GUI, it just makes it really easy to integrate them.

Purview doesn't really do that much to educate users on how to best handle sensitive data. That's more down to how the user is trained. It's only as good as how it is set up by the company. Like with all products, it is only as good as how well it is initialized, configured, and maintained.

When it comes to seeing compliance in real time, Purview does roughly give you that, but it's only as good as how it's configured. If it's not configured well to scan all of the data areas in your company, it won't do the job. To give you an example, someone could have Purview switched on but have a hybrid-cloud environment and not be scanning their on-premises file services. Purview can do that, but they might not have configured it to do so.

I would give Purview a solid eight out of 10. It has come a long way since I started using it. There is still work that needs to be done on it, but they've done a great job on it so far.

We do a lot of projects for state governments in the US. One of the states had a vast amount of data, around 20 years worth, spread across various systems. We had non-relational databases, files, Snowflake, Oracle, Excel, and more. We aimed to turn this data into meaningful information, track its lineage, and identify problems. I did the proof of concept for this.

It is crucial to us that Purview was built taking into account critical regulations from around the world. The tool considers compliances related to PHI, PII data, and Europe's GDPR. All these are taken into consideration while developing the tool. That's really good.

For data loss protection in Purview, we've explored how third-party access works, particularly concerning the exposure of sensitive data like PHI and PII. We looked into how this data can be masked or hidden. Currently, our team is developing further based on these explorations.

As one of the world's leading healthcare companies, we manage vast amounts of data, especially from state government projects. Healthcare data is very critical, and we can't expose any PII or PHI data due to compliance requirements. 

We audit every three to six months, and we need to justify why the PII or the PHI data has been accessed. From that point of view, this solution gives us very good leverage from the data governance perspective.

Purview has helped to reduce the number of solutions we need to interact with each other because this has a governance portal, analytics portal, data catalog, and data dictionaries. Everything can be done in one single tool.

The beauty of Microsoft tools is that they are valuable, and most of them are UI-driven. A couple of my team members who did not undergo any kind of training, were able to leverage the tool and explore it to the core. Whereas other tools that we use, for example, Erwin or any IBM tool, need a lot of training or a lot of self-running to start mastering the tool. 

At the same time, Microsoft is very easy. Using one single tool, we can accomplish everything. This has made a huge impact on the project timelines including the implementations of certain solutions, data governance portal, building a data governance portal, etcetera. This solution has reduced the number of solutions that affected the complexity of our data governance.

Purview tremendously has affected the visibility we have in our state. Because when we started in our company, nobody had explored using a data governance tool and Microsoft Purview. It was still coming out of its cocoon. We were working together with Microsoft on a lot of issues.

Purview enables us to show our compliance in real time. When I'm on a government project, and we discuss the data, often the management or leadership asks for a report. We simply log in to the tool and instantly create a report. In just a fraction of a second, we have all the information at our fingertips.

Purview has helped to reduce the time to action on insider threats by 30% to 40%. We can identify which fields expose our data or the columns that expose our PII PHI. We also know the data lineage and who has access to the data. 

In case of any compliance issue, it will pinpoint the particular individuals who have access to this data, and then we can ask for an explanation.

The use of Purview helped to save both time and money because we ended up using one tool for most of the data governance work. The project I worked on was around $600,000, and the POC was around $200,000. We probably saved around $400,000 annually.

Purview has affected our ability to stay on top of compliance and provides a report on who has access to the data. Whenever we have an audit, it helps to determine who accessed the data and their need for access. It has a significant impact.

The data lineage feature stands out. It tracks where the data comes from and any changes made. However, it's currently limited to Microsoft products. We can track lineage data with Azure Data Factory.

Another great feature is the ability to connect to any data source. We've linked it with the enterprise architect, a data modeling tool, and Erwin.

It is important to us that Purview can connect to Android devices and data in other software-as-a-service apps. We've connected to Snowflake, Erwin, Oracle, DB2, and more. Name any database, and we've probably connected to it.

It is crucial that Purview offers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments like AWS and GSP. The solution has an analytics space for data governance. It helps identify who should have access to specific fields. 

Another beneficial feature is the data catalog. It allows us to streamline and classify data, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access it. 

Purview integrates natively with Azure, Dynamics 365, and Office 365, which is also a remarkable feature. We connected to Office 365 Excel files and even accessed a few emails for a proof of concept. We also linked it with Microsoft Power BI. Most Microsoft products have a very good amalgamation.

There is room for improvement when it comes to Purview's data connector platform in supporting ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources.

Microsoft has done an impressive job. I've been in this domain for over 15 years and have used IBM's data governance tool in the past. Microsoft's current offering sets a baseline with features like data governance catalogs and connectivity to various tools.

The product is evolving, and there are some bugs, especially in lineage data lineage and adding parameters. It's maturing, and the data lineage needs improvement. While connecting to Microsoft products is a piece of cake, connecting to external ones, like Snowflake, is more challenging. 

I work for one of the biggest healthcare companies. I've been working on their project for probably almost one and a half to two years now. 

I got the chance to work with Microsoft Purview a year ago.

It's very stable. I never experienced any freezes.

I've never encountered any performance slowdown. Scalability is pretty good.

The customer service and support were pretty good. I engaged with them for about six months on various topics.

Positive

I used something from IBM. We switched to Purview because licensing for the IBM solution was very expensive, and the learning curve was too high.

We have a separate dev ops team. I was part of the discussions from a dev manager perspective but not directly involved in the deployment process. 

When we did the proof of concept, we had about three endpoints. We deployed it in two locations, North Carolina and somewhere in the central, both East and Central.

It's a SaaS model, so it doesn't require any maintenance. Moreover, we deployed it on a private cloud since we work on state government solutions.

I have seen a 100% return on investment.

The pricing is decent. It is neither too low nor too high. Given its capabilities, the pricing is justified.

We previously used the IBM infrastructure but as we are a premium partner with Microsoft, we collaborated with them and began exploring Purview.

Since it is still maturing, I would rate it an eight out of ten. It's a wonderful tool, I would advise everyone to explore it from the data governance perspective.