Securing company data that is stored remotely on employee-owned mobile devices or in the cloud is still difficult for IT departments, but it’s becoming a much more manageable problem thanks to tools like Vera. And now Microsoft Corp. is joining the fray too with a competing service called Azure Information Protection that is set to roll out next month.

The offering is based on technology that Redmond obtained through the acquisition of an Israeli startup called Secure Islands Ltd. last year. The outfit’s flagship IQProtector software could  automatically determine a file’s sensitive based on its contents and limit who can open it accordingly. Azure Information Protection makes similar functionality available in Office 365 so that users may take advantage of access controls from the moment they create a new document. The potential use cases are numerous.

A company’s finance department, for example, could have the service automatically prevent other units from viewing a document if it contains credit card information. And organizations in regulated industries will be able to enforce similar restrictions on confidential data like patient records. Microsoft says that the controls remain in place even if a file is moved to a user’s mobile device or an external cloud service, which makes it very straightforward for administrators to handle security violations. Azure Information Protection’s backend management console provides the ability to revoke user permissions at the first sign of trouble.

The service certainly sounds appealing, but its feature set shares a lot of similarities with  Vera and the other better-established alternatives out there. Microsoft’s true advantage lies in the ubiquitousness of Office 365. The company’s sales force could bundle Azure Information Protection with new enterprise deals while upselling to old accounts that could also benefit from improved access controls. As a result, the existing players in the data governance space can expect fierce competition from the vendor once its new service becomes generally available.

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