The new normal of remote work has a potential downside risk of increasing security and operational gaps in compliance, data protection, and governance—which no organization can afford. One of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to mitigate this additional risk is to integrate information protection, governance, and compliance into the solutions that users and organizations already use to communicate and collaborate.
If you are using Microsoft products like Outlook and Teams for remote workers, Microsoft has integrated, native tools for data protection, compliance, and governance across platforms, devices, and endpoints. By integrating Microsoft Purview solutions like Compliance Manager, Information Protection, and Data Lifecycle Management directly with the productivity platform, Microsoft has made data protection much simpler.
Compliance officers and chief risk officers can not only reduce risk by leveraging these solutions; they can also strengthen governance, lower costs, simplify management, and empower remote workers in a way that protects sensitive data and enhances workforce productivity.
Here are three key ways these integrated solutions from Microsoft help organizations rise to the challenge of securing, protecting, and empowering the remote workforce:
- End-to-end coverage with a single view across all platforms:Using a single end-to-end system for data protection and governance can help to ensure that no matter where a document is stored or shared, it remains compliant and secure. With this model, new data can be tracked across all platforms as it’s created. For example, information protection solutions built into Microsoft 365 work across platforms and devices to keep track of sensitive information wherever it lives.
- Integrated policy management:Central management can be used to determine and enforce a wide range of data protection, security, and governance policies. You can manage which documents need to be encrypted or watermarked and stop employees from accidentally exposing sensitive data via collaboration tools such as chat or file sharing. You can ensure data protection policies are integrated into everyday productivity applications to automate policy management and eliminate the need for unnecessary bolted-on point products.
- Automation and intelligence: Standardized data such as Social Security or credit card numbers can be automatically identified and classified using sensitive information types and sensitivity labels in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal. Unstructured data such as product designs or other intellectual property can be flagged using machine learning-powered classifiers. As regulations and company policies change, classifiers can reclassify, protect, or delete information that may become newly regulated or sensitive.
Success story
Fortuna Düsseldorf, the German football club known as F95, faced a variety of compliance and data protection challenges, such as ensuring the protection of private information about players’ health and contracts and other data in the face of strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules in Europe. The issues were exacerbated by the team’s multiple facilities and locations, as well as the use of social media and other mobile platforms by the team’s young, digitally savvy players.
The team focused on a three-stage plan built around Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Purview compliance portal, Microsoft Azure, and more. “We wanted a modern, flexible, efficient workspace for our diverse environment, and we wanted the simplicity of a single solution,” says Samir Sisic, head of IT at F95. When COVID-19 struck, the team was prepared. According to Christian Koke, chief marketing officer for the team, the Microsoft solutions “helped us make the shift to a new way of working within a matter of days.”
To read more about Fortuna Dusseldorf’s story with Microsoft, visit the customer success article here.
Reduce complexity, improve protection
Data protection, governance, and compliance have the potential to be more complex and challenging in a world of more stringent regulatory requirements and an increasingly remote and hybrid workforce.
But just because compliance can be more complex doesn’t mean it should be more complex. In fact, now is the perfect time to simplify compliance and governance so that your organization can be ready to address the challenges of the hybrid workplace today and into the future.
For more information on how your organization can modernize data protection, governance, and compliance, please visit Microsoft and take advantage of the many resources available on this special information hub.
