Clarification Required on Microsoft Purview Data Protection Capabilities

Question

During my recent interactions with Microsoft technical support for implementing Purview, there was significant emphasis on the tool's ability to protect data beyond Microsoft 365. However, when I inquired about the protection of non-Microsoft platforms such as SAP, Oracle, and other types of databases, the response primarily focused on Google Drive and Dropbox protection. This has created some confusion for me regarding the tool's actual range of capabilities.

Several technology providers have provided us with clear Pros and Cons of Microsoft E5, with one key limitation being that Microsoft Purview only supports Microsoft data and publicly available cloud platforms, without any native support for SAP, Oracle, or other enterprise systems. Additionally, it has been suggested that many data types (e.g., HTML, ODS, TXT, PDF, JPEG, PNG, AVI, MPEG, etc.) cannot be classified due to limitations within the tool.

Given this, I am finding it difficult to reconcile the messaging presented during our discussions, which suggested that Purview can protect "all types of data," with the information provided by other vendors. Could you please provide clarity on this matter? Specifically, I would appreciate insights into:

1. The extent to which Microsoft Purview supports the classification and protection of data from non-Microsoft systems (e.g., SAP, Oracle).
2. The types of file formats that Purview can classify and protect, especially beyond standard Microsoft formats.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your clarification.

Answer 1

1. Support for Non-Microsoft Systems

Microsoft Purview primarily excels within the Microsoft ecosystem (e.g., Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Teams, Exchange) but does extend to some third-party cloud providers and on-premises environments. However, native, out-of-the-box support for platforms like SAP or Oracle is limited. Here's a detailed view of where Purview currently stands:

Cloud Platforms Supported:

• Native integrations with Google Drive and Dropbox.
  • Ability to monitor and classify files synced from these platforms.

Third-Party Data Connectors:

• Microsoft offers data connectors (via Purview Data Map) that can collect metadata from sources like SQL databases, AWS S3, and some third-party systems.
• For SAP, Oracle, or custom enterprise systems, Purview typically requires custom connectors or third-party integration solutions.

On-Premises Data Sources:

• Data classification and protection extend to local file shares and on-premises SQL databases (via Microsoft’s Unified Labeling Client and scanner tools).
• For other enterprise platforms (e.g., SAP), customers typically rely on third-party vendors or APIs to integrate Purview.

Key Limitation: The absence of native support for enterprise systems like SAP, Oracle, and non-public cloud platforms means that users must create custom solutions to bridge these gaps.

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2. Supported File Formats for Classification and Protection

Microsoft Purview can classify and protect many standard file formats, but there are some limitations, particularly with non-standard or media-heavy formats. Here's a more precise breakdown:

File Types that Microsoft Purview Can Classify and Label:

• Microsoft formats: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote.
  • Emails: Outlook (.msg, .eml).
    • PDFs: Purview supports PDF classification, but only certain types of PDFs (those that allow tagging and text extraction).
      • Text-based formats: TXT, CSV, XML, HTML.
        • Standard image formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF (limited to detecting embedded text using Optical Character Recognition [OCR]).

File Types with Limited or No Support:

• Open Document formats: ODS, ODT, ODP.
• Multimedia files: AVI, MPEG, MP3, MP4 (cannot be classified or labeled by default).
• Scanned PDFs or protected PDFs: If the document is not OCR-processed, Purview cannot classify it.
  • Proprietary formats: SAP, Oracle, and other enterprise systems generate files that might not be natively classified.

Given this, your concerns are valid—Purview’s messaging around "all types of data" typically applies to supported file formats within the Microsoft ecosystem and select third-party platforms. For enterprise systems like SAP and Oracle, custom integration will be necessary, and some non-standard formats (e.g., multimedia files) cannot be classified or protected directly.

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hth

Marcin