Azure Information Protection Scanner and Information Protection SDK – What is it?

Introduction

Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security team just announced lots of interesting things around information and thread protection.
Two of the most interesting announces are:

• GA of Azure Information Protection scanner
• Preview of the Azure Information Protection SDK

What is the Azure Information Protection scanner?

At the Ignite 2016 conference, the team announced the first public preview of the Azure Information Protection Scanner (AIPS).
Basically, it gives you a hybrid-cloud version of Azure Information Protection because with AIPS you are able to scan your on-premises files and then act and report findings to Azure Information Protection.

The following data stores are currently supported:

• Network shares that use CIFS (SMB) and are exposed as UCN paths
• Local folders on the server (must be a Windows Server 2012R2/2016) that runs Azure Information Protection Scanner
• Libraries and sites on SharePoint 2016/13

You can either run the APIS in discovery mode where it reports findings and shows actions for labeling. Or, you can configure AIPS to automatically apply labels, classification, and protection accordingly.

The Azure Information Protection Scanner can be downloaded here.

The official Docs from Microsoft are found here.

What is the Azure Information Protection SDK?

The Azure Information Protection SDK (AIP SDK) is a cross-platform SDK (software development kit) that is available for both Windows, Mac and Linux. As an independent software developer or a company that develops software for internal use you can now use the AIP SDK to classify, label and protects content so that it integrates with the other “AIP-enabled” Microsoft products (O365, AIP Scanner, AIP Client, Cloud App Security).

Microsoft also has the cross-platform Rights Management SDK 4.2 (previously called Microsoft Rights Management SDK, but ‘Microsoft’ got removed from its name). The SDK lets you integrate AD RMS and Azure Rights Management into your applications.

So, where do I download the AIP SDK?

The AIP SDK is currently in private preview, so there is no public preview available for download yet. Once the AIP SDK gets publicly available I will write a follow-up post.

Best Regards,

Rasmus

Photo by The U.S. National Archives