Data loss prevention, compliance, privacy, and accessibility

Data loss prevention policies

Your organization’s data is likely one of the most important assets you are responsible for safeguarding as an administrator. The ability to build apps and automation to use that data is a large part of your company’s success. You can use Power Apps and Power Automate for rapid build and rollout of these high-value apps so that users can measure and act on the data in real time.

Apps and automation are becoming increasingly connected across multiple data sources and multiple services. Some of these might be external, third-party services and might even include some social networks. Users generally have good intentions, but they can easily overlook the potential for exposure from data leakage to services and audiences that should not have access to the data.

You can create data loss prevention (DLP) policies that can act as guardrails to help prevent users from unintentionally exposing organizational data. DLP policies can be scoped at the environment level or tenant level, offering flexibility to craft sensible policies that strike the right balance between protection and productivity. For tenant-level policies, you can define the scope to be all environments, selected environments, or all environments except ones you specifically exclude.

Connectors can be classified as either Business or Non-Business in the context of your organization. Connectors that host business-use data should be classified as Business and connectors that host personal-use data should be classified as Non-Business. Any connectors that you want to restrict usage of across one or more environments should be classified as Blocked. When a new policy is created, all connectors are defaulted to the Non-Business group. From there they can be moved to Business or Blocked based on your preference. You can manage connectors when you create or modify the properties of a DLP policy from the Microsoft Power Platform admin center. These affect Microsoft Power Platform canvas apps and Power Automate flows. To create a DLP policy, you need to be a tenant admin or have the Environment Admin role.

Compliance and data privacy

Microsoft is committed to the highest levels of trust, transparency, standards conformance, and regulatory compliance. Microsoft’s broad suite of cloud products and services are all built from the ground up to address the most rigorous security and privacy demands of our customers.

To help your organization comply with national, regional, and industry-specific requirements governing the collection and use of individuals’ data, Microsoft provides the most comprehensive set of compliance offerings (including certifications and attestations) of any cloud service provider. There are also tools for administrators to support your organization’s efforts. In this part of the document we will cover in more detail the resources available to help you determine and achieve your own organization requirements.

Data Protection

Data as it is in transit between user devices and the Microsoft datacenters are secured. Connections established between customers and Microsoft datacenters are encrypted, and all public endpoints are secured using industry-standard TLS. TLS effectively establishes a security-enhanced browser to server connection to help ensure data confidentiality and integrity between desktops and datacenters. API access from the customer endpoint to the server is also similarly protected. Currently, TLS 1.2 (or higher) is required for accessing the server endpoints.

Resources to manage GDPR compliance

The European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the newest privacy regulations enacted that gives rights to people to manage their personal data. A complete discussion of GDPR is beyond the scope of this content, however Microsoft Power Platform does fully support the GDPR. For more GDPR resources and information, visit the Trust Center.

Accessibility in Microsoft Power Platform

One of the things that Microsoft values the most is making sure that Power Platform is accessible and inclusive to all kinds of users all over the world. An accessible canvas app will allow users with vision, hearing, and other impairments to successfully use the app. In addition to being a requirement for many governments and organizations, following the below guidelines increases usability for all users, regardless of their abilities. You can use the Accessibility Checker to help review potential accessibility issues in your app.

For more details and suggestions on making your canvas apps more accessible, visit Create accessible canvas apps in Power Apps.