Data governance with Microsoft Azure Purview

Microsoft changed the branding of Microsoft Azure Purview to Microsoft Purview just recently and added more Microsoft 365 compliance portfolio to the Purview suite.

Where is my data?
Engineering data in Azure makes data analytics possible. But how do we keep track of the whereabouts of this data? What is its origin, who owns this data? Who is allowed to use it? Is there a way of controlling the unwanted usage of data? How can we govern data? With the ever-growing need for data. Governing data is a journey but, in this blog, let me explain in short, how to keep a better eye on it. Microsoft Purview provides compliances tooling and represents data asset in one place. Making data management and protection of sensitive data easier.



Govern data in Azure (1)
According to Microsoft, Data Governance provides mechanisms and processes to maintain control over your applications and resources in Azure. It involves planning, your initiatives and setting up strategic priorities. Governance in Azure is primarily implemented with two services.
• Azure Policy: This allows you to create, assign, and manage policy definitions to enforce rules for your resources. And this feature keeps those resources in compliance with your corporate standards.
• Azure Cost Management: This allows you to track cloud usage and expenditures for your Azure resources and other cloud providers.



Data governance
Data governance ensures that a company’s data is properly accessed and used, and that all data is managed and kept safe toward breaches and to comply with regulations. It also requires an oversight to maintain the quality of the data being shared. Bad data can lead to missed or poor business decisions, loss of revenue, and increased costs. Data stewards will oversee the data quality and can identify when data is corrupt or inaccurate refresh data rates to be relevant, or out of context. But how can we oversee the usage and originated use of data sources (lineage) and the usage of on-premises, (multi)Cloud and SaaS sensitive data?

Microsoft Purview
What is Microsoft Purview (2)
Azure Purview is a unified data governance service that helps you manage and govern your on-premises, multi-cloud, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) data. Easily create a holistic, up-to-date map of your data landscape with automated data discovery, sensitive data classification. This Empowers anybody who is working with data, analysts, data engineers and data scientists and technical specialist who are allowed to integrate Azure Purview with for instance Azure Synapse Analytics (Azure Data catalog v2), SQL Server, Power BI, Azure SQL. Furthermore, to capture lineage relationships between data assets and classifying data across the data estate of a company. Purview also monitors the classified data usage on the level of security, monitors data usage, and enables data discovery.



Purview (4)
With Microsoft Purview it is possible to create a map with automated data discovery, Microsoft Azure Purview can be used for end-to-end data lineage, govern, protect sensitive data by classification and manage a data estate.



A well-planned deployment of a data governance platform like Microsoft Purview can give benefits for some common requirements to meet data governance objectives. According to Microsoft Data Governance provides mechanisms and processes to maintain control over your applications and resources in Azure. Overall Purview gives an embedded experience and Microsoft Purview can help to map the data estate on the level of:
I. Lineage – End to end data lineages
II. Find data asset – Document data objects in the Data warehouse
III. Set and check upon Data Classification – Tag and classify data and trace the tagged data
IV. Ability to use Search on Metadata level
V. Data lifecycle and change making the available data current

Resource used:
1. Azure Management Overview – Azure Governance | Microsoft Docs
2. Achieve unified data governance with Microsoft Purview, now with Compliance capabilities | Microsoft Azure
3. Cloud Adoption Framework – Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework Governance Benchmark Tool (cafbaseline.com)
4. The future of compliance and data governance is here: Introducing Microsoft Purview – Microsoft Security Blog