Synergy Advisors Accelerators for Secure Collaboration using Copilot for Microsoft 365
Unleash the potential of Gen-AI with best-in-class Microsoft 365 solutions, without undermining your secure collaboration scenarios, using Synergy Advisors Copilot Data Governance Assessment and Optimization Offerings
We are thrilled to announce a strategic partnership between Synergy Advisors and Microsoft Corporation aimed at enhancing data security in the deployment of Gen-AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. As leaders in the Compliance industry, both companies recognize the critical importance of safeguarding sensitive data while harnessing the power of artificial intelligence.
In today’s digital landscape, the proliferation of Gen-AI tools has revolutionized how businesses operate, offering unprecedented insights and efficiencies. However, with this innovation comes the responsibility to ensure the protection of sensitive information. This partnership between Synergy Advisors and Microsoft signifies our joint commitment to addressing this challenge head-on.
Synergy Advisors has, for many years, developed solutions that provide analytics and operations optimization via automation that effectively reduce cost, time, and risk to existing Microsoft 365 customers who can then maximize investments in their collaboration platform. Our solutions complement and augment Microsoft technologies, never replacing them.
Better together
“While the CIO and CTO are correct in seeking innovation and identifying Copilot for M365 as the best tool on the market, the CISO, compliance business units, and other cybersecurity areas may have concerns about the risk of data exposure within Microsoft 365 workloads, whether due to unintentional or malicious overexposure. However, we can effectively address these concerns, enabling secure collaboration in today’s AI-driven world while significantly improving productivity through the use of Copilot for M365.”
Cristian Mora, CEO and Founder
Microsoft 365 leverages your existing definitions to provide users access to documents. Synergy Advisors provides analytics tools that quickly identify:
Sensitive data
Internal and external, authorized and unauthorized users
Access type, such as relaxed permissions
What specific workloads (in this case M365, though we can also review files stored in Azure, on-premises, and AWS data at rest repositories).
And of course, we also provide all kinds of remediation actions to bring files, especially those that contain sensitive information, back into compliance:
- Remove or modify shared links
- Remove overexposed groups from shares
- Remove anonymous or external access
- Move the data to a more appropriate location
- Apply Purview IP protection, including labels and encryption
“Synergy Advisors revolutionizes data security in collaboration with Microsoft by seamlessly integrating Copilot for Microsoft 365, offering unparalleled insights into sensitive data, ensuring compliance, and enhancing productivity in today’s AI-driven environment.”
Aditi Naik, Sr. Partner Dev Manager, Microsoft Americas
Key Initiatives of Our Partnership:
PRIVACY NOTE
One important aspect of our solutions is that for privacy reasons, customers do NOT have to share their sensitive data outside their organization. This extends to their M365 data, files, configuration, and other information. Unlike other solutions, which require this information to be copied to a SaaS app for processing, we are not “data holders” or “data retention” entities; our solutions are deployed in your Azure infrastructure and these insights are never shared with Synergy Advisors or outside the organization.
Analyze and Optimize
- We start by identifying user activity with sensitive data and the level of access granted to those resources (based on your existing Access Control Lists ACLs) and additional collaboration/sharing settings provided in Microsoft 365 SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, Teams Chats, meetings, and Office apps.
- We conduct thorough assessments to identify and quantify potential data exposure risks associated with Copilot for M365 deployments. By analyzing content types and user access patterns, we gain valuable insights into areas of vulnerability and exposure. You can interact with this data through our analytics tool; with just a couple of clicks, you can identify which areas can be optimized/remediated.
- Offering Description – Copilot Data Governance Assessment [CDGA]
- We start by identifying user activity with sensitive data and the level of access granted to those resources (based on your existing Access Control Lists ACLs) and additional collaboration/sharing settings provided in Microsoft 365 SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, Teams Chats, meetings, and Office apps.
- Building on our assessment findings, our solution provides evidence to accelerate the optimization strategies to mitigate data exposure risks effectively. These strategies encompass data at rest access overexposure removal:
- Specific locations
- Specific people
- This includes not only internal groups, but external and social accounts accessing sensitive information
- Specific methods
- Anonymous
- Everyone at the organization
- Offering Description – Copilot Data Governance Optimization [CDGO]
- Building on our assessment findings, our solution provides evidence to accelerate the optimization strategies to mitigate data exposure risks effectively. These strategies encompass data at rest access overexposure removal:
Govern
In addition to one-time review and optimization, Synergy Advisors provides a set of technologies that can continue to protect the organization against compliance issues
E-Inspector prioritizes continuous monitoring and analysis of data access patterns to promptly detect and respond to instances of overexposure. Leveraging E-Clearance definitions, we can quickly identify policy violations in your organization based on your business needs.
E-Inspector – Data at rest protection overview
For more details related to E-Clearance, visit: HERE
Recognizing the critical role that human factors play in data security, we implement comprehensive user education and awareness programs, via alerts and notifications from Teams where the user can easily identify sensitive data, the activity, and the labels applied to it. By fostering a culture of data stewardship and accountability, we empower users to make informed decisions and uphold stringent data protection standards.
For more details related to the E-Visor Teams app – My Office 365 Files visit: (EN video), (SP Video)
Data protection is an ongoing journey and our partnership is committed to continued improvements. We have recently introduced the capability to discover and act based on changes, where activities could include new files, modified files, new shares, modifications to existing shares and more, removing the need (and associated cost) to scan across the entire environment after an initial discovery.
For more details related to E-Racer visit: HERE
By combining our expertise and resources, Synergy Advisors and Microsoft Corporation are poised to redefine the paradigm of data protection in Gen-AI tool deployments. Our collaborative efforts will not only mitigate data exposure risks but also enable organizations to harness the full potential of artificial intelligence with confidence and integrity.
We look forward to embarking on this transformative journey together and setting new benchmarks for data security excellence in the digital age.
MORE INFO:
If you are interested in learning more about the actions and strategy behind these tools, visit:
- Driving compliance success while maximizing M365 Copilot – Part I
- Driving compliance success while maximizing M365 Copilot – Part II [Quick remediation]
- Driving compliance success while maximizing M365 Copilot – Part III [Govern]
Ready for a live demo? Fill out the form below and we will be more than happy to run a 1:1 session/demo with you.
