Businesses today have to deal with huge amounts of sensitive data such as customer information such as financial records, customer information, and intellectual property. It is essential to safeguard the information from unauthorized access to ensure that customers continue to trust businesses with their data and it is legally accessible in the event of an occurrence of dispute or regulatory actions.

Unauthorized access to sensitive data can have severe negative consequences for businesses which could include loss of sales, reputational damage, and legal costs. By adopting a plan that outlines security procedures to protect sensitive data your business can lower the chance of cyber-attacks, and guard against legal risks.

Information protection is a broad category of processes and software that allow businesses to keep their sensitive information secure, whether in the cloud or on a device, such as a laptop. Information protection includes everything from policies that determine what information is considered sensitive and the manner in which it’s used to access it, to physical controls such as password protection or encryption, to processes that monitor access, identify potential threats, and take action to them.

The Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) suite of services, also referred to as Azure Information Protection or Purview, enables the detection and classification of sensitive information in accordance with its sensitivity using labeling. This lets you protect the content wherever it’s stored or travels, to track who has accessed it, and to block access when necessary. It’s also possible for you to extend MIP into other applications and systems via the SDK, so that line-of-business applications can apply sensitive labels to documents when they export them, or design tools like CAD/CAM can utilize MIP to automatically encrypt files before they’re saved to an appropriate folder.

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