When “Good Enough” Fails: Why Spirion Succeeds Where Microsoft Purview Falls Short

For organizations navigating global privacy obligations like GDPR and the Australian Privacy Principles, “good enough” is no longer enough. For many, their experience with Microsoft Purview includes common, critical shortfalls—manual reporting, unreliable detection, poor visibility, and unmanageable AI data. 

This article breaks down the shortcomings of Microsoft Purview related to sensitive data protection and how Spirion fills the gaps with unmatched data discovery accuracy, automation, and governance power. 

Microsoft Purview’s reporting process is heavily manual. Users must “painstakingly pull things out”—a phrase that captures the time drain and frustration of trying to build actionable reports in a complex compliance landscape. 

Why it matters: 

• Manual report generation wastes valuable resources and slows decision-making. 

• Inconsistent or incomplete reporting hinders privacy teams from showing progress or defensibility in audits. 

• Legal teams can’t get the single view of data exposure needed to make informed risk decisions. 

How Spirion Helps: 
Spirion automates data discovery, labeling, classification, and reporting out of the box. With intuitive dashboards and customizable reports, privacy and legal teams gain real-time insight into risk, aging data, and data governance posture without digging. 

Purview’s detection accuracy has left many security teams hesitant to enable automatic labeling—one of its core intended use cases. That’s a major red flag. 

The consequences of mistrust: 

• Sensitive data may go unlabeled—or worse, mislabeled—putting compliance and reputations at risk. 

• Manual overrides add complexity and reduce scalability. 

• Organizations delay automating controls, defeating the purpose of deploying the tool. 

The Spirion Difference: 
Spirion’s machine learning is purpose-built for precision in discovering and classifying sensitive data, whether it’s in emails, cloud shares, legacy archives, or structured databases. We combine AI with rule-based logic and human-in-the-loop workflows to deliver confidence in every detection—so automation becomes safe, not scary. 

Purview’s data scope is largely limited to Microsoft 365 environments. That’s a problem when critical data resides across databases, on-prem shares, endpoints, and SaaS applications. 

What’s at stake: 

• Incomplete data inventories. 

• Inaccurate risk scoring. 

• Misalignment with regulatory obligations that require a full picture of sensitive data exposure. 

Spirion’s Advantage: 
Spirion provides unified discovery and classification across hybrid environments. Our Sensitive Data Platform (SDP) delivers an accurate, complete picture of both labeled and unlabeled data—structured and unstructured, on-prem and cloud. 

You can even connect new sources on your own without professional services, thanks to our easy-to-use connectors and dynamic data mapping. 

A concern throughout the industry is rising to the surface: legal and privacy leaders want clarity on data aging. Holding onto stale data—especially with the rise of AI—invites regulatory scrutiny and unnecessary risk. 

Purview’s gaps: 

• No actionable data aging insights. 

• AI-generated content from tools like Copilot isn’t clearly governed or categorized. 

• Legal teams can’t justify data retention or deletion policies without aging visibility. 

What Spirion Delivers: 
Spirion automatically surfaces aging data and flags high-risk or redundant data that violates data minimization principles. Combined with Playbook-based actions, Spirion enables organizations to automate defensible deletion workflows, reduce data bloat, and support AI governance policies with confidence. 

From reporting and detection to aging data and AI, Microsoft Purview introduces more friction than confidence. Spirion eliminates the guesswork by delivering: 

• Unified visibility across your hybrid environment 

• Accurate, automated classification 

• Real-time governance and compliance-ready reporting 

• Data aging insights for defensible deletion 

• Seamless support for GDPR and APP frameworks 

The result? Faster time to compliance, reduced risk, and a governance experience your legal team will love. 

Struggling with Purview? Let Spirion show you what true data-centric governance looks like. 
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