Azure Information Protection: Available in public preview now!

First published on CloudBlogs on Jul 12, 2016
Following on from our June 22 announcement , today we are excited to release the public preview for Azure Information Protection. This initial preview comprises two components:

• An Azure management portal for the configuration and management of information protection policies, rules and labels.
• An Azure Information Protection client for the consumption and enforcement of classification, labeling and protection policies across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook (2010/13/16).

Azure Information Protection brings together Azure Rights Management (RMS) and classification and labeling technologies from Secure Islands, and this preview provides the ability to:

• Classify, label and protect data at the time of creation or modification . Define policies to classify and label data in an easy-to-use and intuitive way. These policies can be used to apply labels and protection either automatically based on content, or manually by the user. You can also define a default policy, and make recommendations to users.
• Apply persistent protection that travels with your data . Once classified, protection can be applied to data needing protection. The classification labels and protection travels with the document or email regardless of where it is stored and with whom it is shared.
• Enable safe sharing . Share data safely with users within your organization as well as with external people. Document owners can define who can access data and what they can do with it; for example, recipients can view and edit files, but they cannot print or forward.
• Make the right decisions and stay productive . Data classification and protection controls are integrated into Office and provide simple, one-click options to secure data that users are working on.
• Manage and deploy policies and rules . Using the Management Portal, you can create, manage and modify all aspects of policies, rules and label configurations. This includes the names of the labels, the color palette, defaults, recommendations, automated detection rules, and visual marking of documents with headers, footers and watermarking.

You can get started right now!

• The management portal is available and the client download is live .
• You can get all the information about the preview and engage with us on Yammer .
• Visit the product page and technical documentation for more information. We have additional guidance and guides on the Yammer site.

Eager to get started? Let’s explore a few scenarios! Check your installation After you have installed the client, click on the Protect button in the ribbon and select Help and Feedback. You will be able to see the client status, whether it is connected to your tenant, as which user, and when the policies were last updated. Automatic classification Using the management portal (see more below) you can apply classification and labels automatically based on document content. The label is applied on save and the user notified as shown in the screenshot below. User driven classification Users can also manually apply their own classifications. You can set a default and require a classification to ensure that all documents are labeled. Recommendations Using the same rules as automatic but making suggestions for users to confirm, recommendations allow your users to make the final decision on classification. Justifications In the event that a user makes a change to the classification, you can require them to provide a justification for auditing purposes. Manage policies Using the Azure management portal, you can confirm all aspects of your policies, rules and labels. Set defaults and justifications You can require all documents to be classified, define a default label to be applied at creation and enforce the capturing of a justification if the classification is changed. Configure labels Within the configuration of each label you can change the text that is displayed, the tooltip description and the color palette that is associated with the label. You can also optionally apply a protection policy (RMS Template) when the label is selected. Apply visuals To help identify sensitive documents, you can apply visual marking in the form of headers, footers and watermarks. Create automatic rules You can define rules that are used to assess content and automatically apply a label. You can set conditions and the actions that are taken in the event that a match is found. We provide a number of built-in conditions (and will continue to add more) or you can define your own custom condition. Feedback We are excited to have you test Azure Information Protection, and we really want your feedback which you can send to us by: For issues – please use the Protect button and select “Help and feedback” For questions and feature requests – please engage with us on Yammer . Thank you The Azure Information Protection team.