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Microsoft recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Data Security Platforms, Q1 2023


Organizations need to protect their sensitive data including intellectual property, trade secrets, customer data, and personally identifiable information from both insiders and external cyber attackers. In fact, 80 percent of organizations experience more than one data breach in their lifetime.1 With global, industry, and national-level regulations, the need to protect sensitive data and prevent data exfiltration has never been more urgent than it is now.

To help our customers navigate this complex data landscape, we are focused on delivering secure, intelligent, and user-centric solutions that provide visibility, reduce complexity, and mitigate risk. Over the past few years, we significantly increased our investment in building our Microsoft Purview data security capabilities across our information protection, data loss prevention (DLP), and insider risk management solutions, as well as our privacy solution: Microsoft Priva. A few recent capabilities are advanced ready-to-use machine learning-enabled classifiers, Adaptive Protection, a DLP migration assistant tool (on-premises DLP to cloud-native DLP), and right to be forgotten for Microsoft Priva Subject Rights Requests.

I am delighted to announce that Forrester listed Microsoft as a Leader in its  2023 Wave™ for Data Security Platforms. The Forrester Wave™ report evaluates the data security platform market and provides a detailed overview of the current offering, strategy, and market presence of these vendors. Microsoft received the highest possible score in the current offering category for data classification, data threat and risk visibility, data masking or redaction, encryption, rights management, privacy use cases, and integrations for Zero Trust criteria; and in the strategy category for the product vision, execution roadmap, and community engagement criteria.  

We believe our investments in advanced classification technology, data threats and risk visibility, rights management, and privacy resulted in this recognition.

Forrester Wave Data Security Platforms Q1 2023 graphic.

The Forrester report also acknowledges: “Microsoft shines with its ecosystem approach—if you go all in,” wrote Heidi Shey, Forrester Principal Analyst, in the report. “Microsoft Purview brings together capabilities to 1. understand and govern data; 2. safeguard data; and 3. improve risk and compliance posture. But Microsoft’s security capabilities go beyond Microsoft Purview. By design, the entire Microsoft ecosystem working together multiplies its value via telemetry from across the environment.” She added, “The power of Microsoft’s telemetry is evident in its capabilities for identifying data threats and risk visibility. These offer strong controls for data masking, encryption, and rights management.”

Our work isn’t stopping there, however. We continue to work closely with our customers to gather feedback to help us build better products. Your input provides critical insights as we strive to create solutions to help you on your data security journey.

Learn more

Read this complimentary copy of The Forrester Wave™: Data Security Platforms, Q1 2023 for the analysis behind Microsoft’s position as a Leader.

Read more about Microsoft’s recognition as a leader in cloud security, email security, security analytics, and more:

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and Twitter (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.


1Cost of a Data Breach Report 2022, IBM. 2022.

The Forrester Wave™ is copyrighted by Forrester Research, Inc. Forrester and Forrester Wave™ are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. The Forrester Wave™ is a graphical representation of Forrester’s call on a market and is plotted using a detailed spreadsheet with exposed scores, weightings, and comments. Forrester does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in the Forrester Wave™. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.

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