Governing Entra‑Registered AI Apps with Microsoft Purview
As the enterprise adoption of AI agents and intelligent applications continues to accelerate, organizations are rapidly moving beyond simple productivity tools toward autonomous, Entra‑registered AI workloads that can access, reason over, and act on enterprise data. While these capabilities unlock significant business value, they also introduce new governance, security, and compliance risks—particularly around data oversharing, identity trust boundaries, and auditability. In this context, it becomes imperative to govern AI interactions at the data layer, not just the identity layer. This is where Microsoft Purview, working alongside Microsoft Entra ID, provides a critical foundation for securing AI adoption—ensuring that AI agents can operate safely, compliantly, and transparently without undermining existing data protection controls. Lets look at the role of each solution Entra ID vs Microsoft Purview A very common misconception is that Purview “manages AI apps.” In reality, Purview and Entra serve distinct but complementary roles: Microsoft Entra ID Registers the AI app Controls authentication and authorization Enforces Conditional Access and identity governance Microsoft Purview Governs data interactions once access is granted Applies classification, sensitivity labels, DLP, auditing, and compliance controls Monitors and mitigates oversharing risks in AI prompts and responses Microsoft formally documents this split in its guidance for Entra‑registered AI apps, where Purview operates as the data governance and compliance layer on top of Entra‑secured identities. Lets look at how purview governs the Entra registered AI apps. Below is the high level reference architecture which can be extended to low level details 1. Visibility and inventory of AI usage Once an AI app is registered in Entra ID and integrated with Microsoft Purview APIs or SDK, Purview can surface AI interaction telemetry through Data Security Posture Management (DSPM). DSPM for AI provides: Visibility into which AI apps are being used Which users are invoking them What data locations and labels are touched during interactions Early indicators of oversharing risk This observability layer becomes increasingly important as organizations adopt Copilot extensions, custom agents and third‑party AI apps. 2. Classification and sensitivity awareness Purview does not rely on the AI app to “understand” sensitivity. Instead the Data remains classified and labeled at rest. AI interactions inherit that metadata at runtime Prompts and responses are evaluated against existing sensitivity labels If an AI app accesses content labeled Confidential or Highly Confidential, that classification travels with the interaction and becomes enforceable through policy. This ensures AI does not silently bypass years of data classification work already in place. 3. DLP for AI prompts and responses One of the most powerful but yet misunderstood purview capabilities is the AI‑aware DLP. Using DSPM for AI and standard Purview DLP: Prompts sent to AI apps are inspected Responses generated by AI can be validated Sensitive data types (PII, PCI, credentials, etc.) can be blocked, warned, or audited Policies are enforced consistently across M365 and AI workloads Microsoft specifically highlights this capability to prevent sensitive data from leaving trust boundaries via AI interactions. 4. Auditing and investigation Every AI interaction governed by Purview can be recorded in the Unified Audit Log, enabling: Forensic investigation Compliance validation Insider risk analysis eDiscovery for legal or regulatory needs This becomes critical when AI output influences business decisions and regulatory scrutiny increases. Audit records treat AI interactions as first‑class compliance events, not opaque system actions 5. Oversharing risk management Rather than waiting for a breach, Purview proactively highlights oversharing patterns using DSPM: AI repeatedly accessing broadly shared SharePoint sites High volumes of sensitive data referenced in prompts Excessive AI access to business‑critical repositories These insights feed remediation workflows, enabling administrators to tighten permissions, re‑scope access, or restrict AI visibility into specific datasets. In a nutshell, With agentic AI accelerating rapidly, Microsoft has made it clear that organizations must move governance closer to data, not embed it into individual AI apps. Purview provides a scalable way to enforce governance without rewriting every AI workload, while Entra continues to enforce who is allowed to act in the first place. This journey makes every organizations adopt Zero Trust at scale as its no longer limited to users, devices, and applications; It must now extend to AI apps and autonomous agents that act on behalf of the business. If you find the article insightful and you appreciate my time, please do not forget to like it 🙂
How to Unassign Assets from Data Products in Microsoft Purview at Once
Hello, I’ve assigned around 100 assets to a specific data product and would now like to unassign all of them at once, rather than removing them individually. Using the Purview REST API with Python, I was able to retrieve the list of my data products and successfully identify the target data product. However, I haven’t been able to fetch the list of assets currently assigned to it, which prevents me from performing a bulk unassignment. Could anyone please advise how to retrieve and unassign all assets from a data product programmatically?
Scaling Data Governance- Does a Purview in a Day Framework Exist?
Hello Purview Community, I’ve been exploring the available acceleration resources for Microsoft Purview, and one thing I noticed is a potential gap in the "In a Day" workshop series. While we have excellent programs like Power BI in a Day or Fabric in a Day, I haven't yet seen a formalized Purview in a Day framework designed to help organizations jumpstart their governance journey in a single, cohesive session. I am reaching out because my team is currently preparing something in this area that we believe will be very useful to the community and Microsoft in the future. Rather than working in isolation, we want to ensure we are aligned with the official roadmap. I wanted to reach out to the community and the Microsoft product team to ask: Is there an official "In a Day" initiative for Purview currently in the works? If not, who would be the best point of contact to discuss alignment? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and seeing if we can build something impactful together!
Purview Synapse Workspace Connection denied
Have a classic Purview setup and trying to scan a Synapse workspace serverless with an integration runtime and a service principal. When we try to select from synapse workspace on the scan, we an error. We can scan dedicated from the with the same integration runtime and service principal. Here is the error. Can anyone assist? Reason: An instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. Connection was denied since Deny Public Network Access is set to Yes (https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/azure-sql/database/connectivity-settings#deny-public-network-access). To connect to this server, use the Private Endpoint from inside your virtual network (https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/sql-database/sql-database-private-endpoint-overview#how-to-set-up-private-link-for-azure-sql-database).
