Minimize the impact of data breach with Microsoft purview.

Data breaches can have serious impact to organizations such as financial losses, legal liabilities, and reputational damage just to mention a few. With the recent increase in data breaches happening globally, it is becoming more crucial to put in measures to ensure our organization data is well secured. In line with the principles of zero trust we should never assume that our systems are 100% secure even with proper security measures in place, we should always assume we are not fully secure and always anticipate breach. With this in mind, we should focus our organizations security policy to be proactive but not reactive, this means that we should really put in the effort to implement measures that will minimize the impact of a breach that might happen, protect and prevent data breaches before they occur rather than implementing measures to respond to incidents after the breach has happened.

Therefore, when it comes to securing the important data you collect as an organization, we have to think of how we can properly encrypt this data so that in the case there is breach and the data is stolen, it will be of no use to the hackers because of the encryption put in place to protect your organization data. To achieve this, Microsoft has provided a solution known as Microsoft Purview Information Protection that enables you to apply sensitivity labels and encryption to your organization data. The encryption provided by Microsoft Purview Information Protection travels with the document even as it leaves the organization hence you are sure that even if the data get stolen, it will be useless to the hackers due to the encryption put in place. To read more about encrytping your data with Microsoft Purview, visit my articles here Data Security Made Easy: Using Microsoft Purview Sensitivity Labels to Encrypt Sensitive Data – Kevoh.Ninja

Data hoarding is another threat that might increase the risk that comes with data breaches. Other than encrypting the data that we store; we also have to delete the data that we don’t need as an organization. For instance, if you are involved in a breach and part of the data leaked includes sensitive data of a staff that left the organization more than 8 years ago and you no longer need to use the staff information anymore, this ex-staff might file a charge against the organization due to fear of potential identity theft that might originate from the breach. In this case, the ex-staff information had zero value to the organization, but it was stored longer than needed and hence increasing the breach impact and the risks that comes with it. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is a solution that can help you delete the data that is of importance to the business and hence help you meet regulatory requirements that require you to delete the sensitive data that you don’t need. You will benefit from the inbuilt artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities that enables the automatic identification and deletion of data that is no longer needed by the organization.

With these measures in place, you are guaranteed to experience minimal impact in the case of a data breach in your organization. To learn more on how Microsoft Purview can protect your data, check out my data protection blog collection here Microsoft Purview – Kevoh.Ninja