In answer to these demands, Microsoft has enabled Azure Information Protection (AIP) within Office 365 (either as a standard or as a bolt-on) to help organizations classify and protect documents and emails in the cloud.
How does Azure Information Protection work?
Azure Information Protection (AIP) is a cloud-based solution that classifies and protects documents and emails in both SharePoint and Outlook by applying labels. These labels allow an organization to set limits on both the documents and the user’s actions and can then be applied in a number of ways, such as:
- automatically via system administrators by defining the rules and conditions
- manually by users themselves, or
- a combination of both the automation process and manual user application
For example, with AIP you could easily choose which internal and external users can view, print, copy and send documents. These choices can either be applied automatically through SharePoint by the administration team, or by the user themselves in both SharePoint and Outlook.
AIP also allows you to revoke access to a document after granting permissions. This can be performed either manually, or on a set schedule. For instance, you may wish to only allow an external stakeholder access to a document during the lifetime of a project or a sales proposal.
It also offers Office 365 Message Encryption (OME) as an additional layer of security. This provides your users with the ability to encrypt emails, meaning that documents are not only classified with permissions via SharePoint but are also encrypted when sent via Outlook email.
As with most of Microsoft's security models, AIP works by employing Identity-Driven Security. Regardless of whether a user is internal or external to your organization, authentication is performed through the Azure Active Directory. An important advantage of this security approach is that, while information is easily kept away from prying eyes, the content items are still accessible by internal indexing and business intelligence services, such as Power BI. This helps to ensure that content is still discoverable and adds value to the business. This is a major step forward in practical information security compared to peer-to-peer encryption techniques.
Why does your organization need Azure Information Protection?
If you’re working within a Microsoft Office 365 environment, Azure Information Protection provides you with a deeper understanding - as well as granular control of - where your content is being distributed and how it is being used. This level of visibility helps to:
- Prevent illicit modification, storage, and distribution of business-critical data
- Remove the challenge of unauthorized users viewing sensitive content
- Gain greater control of information by monitoring which users are interacting with content and how they are doing so
- Meet regulatory data protection and compliance standards
How does Azure Information Protection help with GDPR and ADA compliance?
Speaking of granular control, this methodology is also a huge benefit when it comes to GDPR and ADA compliance. AIP allows your data protection team to be specific about why you are handling and storing data, the processes around data handling within your organization, and how and when you will delete data if it is requested. Should you be unfortunate enough to suffer a data breach, GPDR states that this does not need to be reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you have implemented appropriate protective measures, such as encryption. AIP’s encryption not only meets but exceeds the recommendations set out by GDPR in this respect, as data encrypted by the solution is entirely useless without the correct encryption key.
