Microsoft Purview Information Protection: Classifying and Labeling Sensitive Data

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Understanding Microsoft Purview Sensitivity Labels

Microsoft Purview offers a powerful feature to help businesses manage and protect sensitive data: sensitivity labels.

Creating and Publishing Sensitivity Labels

Follow these steps to create custom sensitivity labels for documents and emails:

• Go to the Microsoft Purview compliance portal
• Navigate to Sensitivity labels
• Create a new label
• Configure label settings, such as retention, encryption, and access restrictions
• Publish the label to target users

Auto-Labeling for Known Sensitive Data Types

With auto-labeling policies, you can automatically apply sensitivity labels to known sensitive data types like credit cards and health records:

1. Create an auto-labeling policy
2. Define the conditions for applying the label (e.g., specific keywords or content patterns)
3. Add exclusions to avoid incorrect labeling
4. Assign the policy to target users and locations

Enforcing Encryption and Access Restrictions via Labels

To ensure data protection, you can enforce encryption and access restrictions based on sensitivity labels:

• Create an encryption template with encryption requirements
• Assign the encryption template to your sensitivity label
• Configure access restrictions for users, devices, and apps based on the label’s settings

Monitoring Label Usage with Purview Activity Explorer

Track the adoption and usage of your sensitivity labels using the Purview activity explorer:

• Navigate to Compliance solutions
• Select Microsoft Purview Information Protection
• Explore label usage statistics and monitor potential data leaks

Conclusion

Protecting sensitive data is essential for any business. With Microsoft Purview Information Protection, you can create a taxonomy of sensitivity labels, publish them to target users, configure auto-labeling policies, enforce encryption, and monitor adoption. Learn more about Microsoft Cloud Security training from ITP Training.

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