Gaining visibility into the type, volume, and location of sensitive data continues to be a challenge for most organizations, and hybrid work has exaggerated the complexities of protecting sensitive data. Employees are creating, accessing, and sharing data across a myriad of devices and networks, making it imperative for organizations to establish a modern data protection program. The foundational element of such a program is being able to detect and classify data accurately.
At Microsoft, we help customers classify data at scale and with increased accuracy through machine learning and we have been on this journey through Microsoft Purview Information Protection. Information Protection is a built-in, intelligent, unified, and extensible solution to protect sensitive data across your digital estate – in Microsoft 365 cloud services, on-premises, third-party SaaS applications, and more.
With Information Protection, we are building a unified set of capabilities for data classification, labeling, and protection not only in Office Apps, but also in other popular productivity services such as SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams, as well as endpoint devices. Currently there are over 250 pre-built sensitive information types that help identify and classify data. Additionally, organizations can leverage the power of our machine learning-based trainable classifiers, to identify additional categories of data with increased accuracy. These classifiers use business concepts and intelligent algorithms to identify critical information that lives in your data landscape. We currently provide over 70 ready-to-use classifiers that can help detect legal agreements, financial documents, intellectual property, and more. You can also create custom classifiers to meet your unique needs.