Securing your data for faster Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption

Many organizations are already seeing the benefits of leveraging generative AI tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot to boost productivity, improve the quality of work and provide better insights.

However, organizations are discovering that using Copilot across enterprise data—typically stored in SharePoint Online—requires careful consideration to ensure only high-quality and relevant data is utilized. “Data readiness” – or preparing data for Copilot – may involve analyzing the data landscape, establishing a clear taxonomy and defensibly removing ROT (redundant, obsolete, and trivial data).

Additionally, since data in Microsoft 365 is open to Copilot by default, it is crucial to secure sensitive, personal, confidential, and high-value information through the thorough application of permissions and labels.

This latter step can be an involved process and enterprise data security is often the sticking point to adoption of Copilot with IT and legal departments. So why not turn things on their head?

Securing sensitive data

From working with our customers and partners we’ve learned that one path to faster Copilot adoption begins with identifying sensitive, confidential and high-value data first and then making it “safe” by quickly and efficiently moving it to Preserve365 — Preservica’s embedded archiving and digital preservation solution for Microsoft 365 — by applying Microsoft retention labels to files, folders, lists, and libraries, or using Power Automate workflows.

This provides a clear security boundary and demarcation for sensitive, high-value data (Preserve365 currently operates with a default security stance of ‘denied’ to Copilot queries) but with the added benefit that users (with existing Microsoft permissions) can still directly surface this data simply by searching or browsing in SharePoint. Getting high-value data "safe" first also simplifies the task of defensibly deleting ROT data.

Reducing risk and cost

There are several other benefits to using Preserve365 with SharePoint Online in this way:

Automatic Preservation: Leveraging Preservica’s embedded Active Digital Preservation technology ensures critical data is always maintained in the latest readable file formats.

Ease of Access: Data can be quickly found and acted on by users for FOI, litigation, regulatory audits, or brand and IP protection.

Reduced Compliance Risk: By having always readable and trusted long-term data including data migrated into SharePoint from legacy systems

Optimized Storage: Moving high-value assets to Preserve365 frees up space, reduces clutter, and maximizes storage availability for non-sensitive data within SharePoint Online.

Faster Copilot ROI

Focusing on securing and moving sensitive and high-value data to Preserve365 first can lead to faster Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption and ROI, as well as a reduction of risk from exposing sensitive information or not being able to find and action data due to format obsolescence.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is also shaping our future development plans. We understand that whilst some customers may not want to reference data in Preserve365, others do - especially when it comes to long-term value and knowledge reuse.

To that end we are exploring ways to leverage our Active Digital Preservation technology and Microsoft Graph connectors so that Copilot can extract data and insights held in legacy file formats that it would not normally be able to use such as WordPerfect files, migrated Lotus Notes files and legacy AV formats like Real Media plus hundreds of other obsolete formats.

As we enter the new and exciting age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the enterprise, it’s clear that now, more than ever, serious consideration needs to be given to the governance of data and data lifecycle management.

Learn more about Preserve365 here, take a guided product tour here 

We’ll also be presenting on Copilot data cleanup and Preserve365 on our Microsoft 365 Master Class education series - you can learn more and sign-up for the series here