Understanding Purview
Ever since it was combined as a single Umbrella product by Microsoft it has been causing a great deal of confusion with customers. I’ve put together a brief article as part of my upcoming Data Architect School series.
What is Purview?
Purview is actually an umbrella brand that includes three main areas of functionality. This diagram shows in a green box what was previously Purview.
Data Governance (Azure Purview) — focuses on discovering, classifying, and managing data across on-premises, multi-cloud, and SaaS environments — licensed as an Azure, based on how many data assets you have (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/purview/)
Data Security (M365 Purview) — covers data loss prevention, insider risk management, information protection, and adaptive protection. This set of capabilities evolved from what was previously known as Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) — licensed per user as part of M365. (https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/business/purview-suite-pricing?activetab=pivot:frequentlyaskedquestionstab)
Data Compliance (M365 Purview) — focuses on compliance manager, eDiscovery and audit, communication compliance, data lifecycle management, and records management. These capabilities came from what was formerly called Microsoft Information Governance.
Data Governance Capabilities (Azure Purview)
Within the Purview UI, you will see a number of different solutions. The solutions that cover the Data Governance are
Data Map = Centralized Data Catalog and Discovery
This is Central catalog containing metadata (the “data about the data”) such as file names, owners, schemas, and data types.
The benefit this offers is to give visibility across the whole data estate to your teams. It means no more duplicated work or disconnected knowledge silos. And stronger collaboration.
Sensitive Data Identification and Classification
As Purview scans your data estate for Data Map, it uses AI-powered rules and predefined patterns to detect sensitive information such as credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, or email addresses. Once detected, it applies classification labels — metadata tags that categorize data (see Classifications and sensitivity labels in Microsoft Purview).
This automatic classification provides visibility into where sensitive data resides and how it’s used. You can quickly identify which databases or files contain personal data and assess whether they’re being stored or shared appropriately.
From a business perspective, this capability is essential for compliance with regulations such as GDPR, HIPA and other data regulations your company may need to follow.
In short, Azure Purview strengthens trust in your data by giving visibility.
Unified Catalog = Governed, Self-Service Data Access
Data Map covers all your data assets. But Unfied Catalog is where you setup the data assets you want strong Governance over.
It gives a Discovery capability. When a user discovers a dataset in the catalog, they can request access directly through the Purview portal. This request is automatically routed to a dataset’s owner or steward, who can approve or deny it with one click. The entire process is logged for transparency and compliance.
The Business Benefits: Faster decision-making and reduces risk by providing governed, on-demand data access.
You can request access to a Physical Asset / Data Product. If you request access to the Physical Asset, for a few data sources, Purview has the power to grant you access directly through Data Access Policies. Else the request needs to go to a DBA in order to action it, with Purview just tracking the progress of the request.
Business Domains and Data Products
A business domain is a framework for organizing data around a common business purpose or capability, such as Sales, Finance, or Marketing.
Business domains make it easier to manage business concepts, assign ownership, and define governance rules. They differ from the technical domains used in the Data Map (known as collections), which group assets by project, technology, or ownership.
Within each business domain, these is the workflow to setup to monitor Domain Health:
Data Quality and Health Monitoring
Purview accelerates setup of Data Quality rules by providing library of out-of-the-box (OOB) rules that check for common problems such as duplicate rows, empty fields, and missing or non-unique values
Once rules are configured, the data quality model evaluates your data against those rules and generates data quality scores at the asset, product, or domain level. These scores give you a quick snapshot of how your data measures up to the business rules you’ve defined.
Data profiling and data quality scans further enhance visibility:
Data profiling provides quick insights from a small sample set to spot potential issues early.
Data quality scans perform in-depth analysis across full data sets to detect inconsistencies and anomalies.
When problems are detected — such as a sudden drop in a quality score or unusual data patterns — Purview can generate data quality actions that highlight what needs attention. These actions can be assigned to specific people to resolve issues using tools like Azure Data Factory. Once the fix is complete, the issue can be marked as resolved, maintaining a full audit trail.
Data Security Capabilities (M365 Purview)
Data Security protects sensitive information from leaking or being misused — whether accidentally or maliciously. These capabilities evolved from what was previously called Microsoft Information Protection (MIP).
Information Protection
This is where you define and apply sensitivity labels (Confidential, Internal, Public, etc.) to documents, emails, and other content. Labels can trigger automatic encryption, watermarks, or access restrictions. For example, a document labelled “Highly Confidential” might automatically encrypt and block external sharing.
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Key difference from Data Governance classification: Data Governance discovers where sensitive data lives; Data Security protects it with enforced controls.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
DLP policies monitor content across Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and endpoints to prevent sensitive data from leaving the organisation inappropriately. You define rules such as “block emails containing more than 10 credit card numbers” or “warn users before sharing files marked Confidential externally.”
DLP works alongside sensitivity labels — once data is classified, DLP enforces what can and can’t happen to it.
Insider Risk Management
This capability uses behavioural signals to detect potentially risky activity by employees — such as unusual file downloads before a resignation, or patterns suggesting data exfiltration. It’s designed to catch threats that traditional perimeter security misses.
Important note: Insider Risk is designed with privacy controls, so HR and security teams see risk indicators rather than raw surveillance data.
Adaptive Protection
Adaptive Protection dynamically adjusts DLP policies based on a user’s insider risk score. A low-risk user might get a gentle warning; a high-risk user might be blocked entirely from the same action. This reduces friction for trusted employees while tightening controls where risk is elevated.
Data Compliance Capabilities (M365 Purview)
Data Compliance helps organisations meet regulatory obligations and respond to legal or audit requests. These capabilities came from what was formerly called Microsoft Information Governance.
Compliance Manager
Compliance Manager provides a dashboard showing your organisation’s compliance posture against regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and others. It offers a compliance score and prioritised recommendations — essentially a to-do list for improving your regulatory standing.
It includes pre-built assessment templates for 300+ regulations, so you’re not starting from scratch.
eDiscovery and Audit
When legal or regulatory requests arrive — litigation holds, investigations, subject access requests — eDiscovery lets you search across mailboxes, SharePoint, Teams, and other M365 content to find relevant data. You can place holds to prevent deletion and export results for legal review.
Audit provides searchable logs of user and admin activity across M365, essential for investigations and compliance reporting.
Communication Compliance
This monitors communications (email, Teams, Viva Engage) for policy violations such as harassment, insider trading language, or regulatory breaches. It uses trainable classifiers to flag concerning content for review.
Primarily used in regulated industries like financial services where communication monitoring is mandatory.
Data Lifecycle Management and Records Management
Data Lifecycle Management automates retention and deletion policies — keeping data as long as required, then disposing of it appropriately. This reduces storage costs and limits exposure from holding data longer than necessary.
Records Management goes further for content that must be preserved as official records, applying stricter controls including immutability (content cannot be edited or deleted until the retention period ends).
How the Three Pillars Connect
While licensed separately, the three Purview areas share underlying infrastructure:
The ideal setup: Data Governance gives you visibility, Data Security protects what you’ve found, and Data Compliance proves you’re doing it right.
Licensing Summary
For detailed pricing, see the Azure Purview pricing page and the Microsoft Purview suite pricing page.
The Bottom Line
Microsoft’s decision to unify these products under the Purview brand makes sense from a marketing perspective — it positions Microsoft as offering a complete data governance, security, and compliance solution. But for practitioners, it creates confusion because:
The products are licensed differently (Azure vs M365)
They have different admin portals and interfaces
They evolved from different legacy products
Different teams typically own them (data team vs security team vs compliance team)
Understanding these distinctions is the first step to implementing Purview effectively in your organisation.
