Power BI and Fabric Governance – Going from the skies to the ground!

Imagine yourself in the middle of trying to educate and convince senior stakeholders in a large organisation (e.g Head of IT Security, Head of IT, CDO, COO) about how Microsoft Fabric can be securely implemented and Governed. There are debates around how to balance the requirement for self-service with implementing sufficient technical controls to restrict access to potentially sensitive data. All in an organisation where Power BI has brought a lot of value to the business but a lot of pain for IT, essentially forming part of a growing, ungoverned domain of “Shadow IT”. So these stakeholders aren’t immediately sold on the idea of bringing more analytics items into the mix with Microsoft Fabric.

In this session you will be immersed into a series of role-play scenarios with these stakeholders, delivered through an interactive e-learning course. This is complete with a brainstorming exercise and interactive Q&A at the end of each module.

Through these scenarios you will learn clear patterns to deploy in order to “land the plane” and go from high level security requirements to ground operations.

This includes practical steps on how to implement technical controls, but also an understanding of how to organise the people on the ground – the airport staff and crew – so that there are clear roles and responsibilities, processes and ways of working.

The content is delivered through 6 modules:


Module 1: Overview. Understand the high level scope of what is required to effectively Govern and manage a Fabric/Power BI estate.

Module 2: Microsoft Fabric as part of a Data Mesh Architecture. Understand how the principles of Data Mesh apply to Microsoft Fabric and how it solves many of the challenges around data silos and dependencies on specialised technical teams.

Module 3: Administering and monitoring the Fabric environment:

- Manage Fabric capacities from a performance and consumption perspective

-Design feature controls using the Fabric Admin portal and
- know how to analyse Fabric adoption and usage!

Module 4: Data Governance

Understand the principles and key activities required to set up:

-Integration between MS Fabric and Purview for Data lineage /impact analysis, Data Cataloguing, and automatic scanning/identification of sensitive data

- Information Protection, including Data Loss Prevention Sensitivity Label and Data encryption.

- Data Safeguarding including Data residency, data recovery and end-to-end auditing as required to meet compliance requirements.


Module 5: Access control and Data Security

Define and implement security controls around access permissions, including:

-Data level security such as Row/Object level security and OneSecurity at the lakehouse/file level.

-Workspace and artefact security including workspace roles, sharing permissions and delegated data permissions.

-Identity and Network security including Gateways, private endpoints and Microsoft Entra Private Access.

Module 6: The Organisational Operating Model.

Brining it all together and applying the principles of the Fabric Adoption Roadmap to your organisation for end user and developer enablement.

This includes including ensuring the right data culture and setting up an Analytics/BI centre of excellence so that all users and admins have the appropriate level of support and the right environment for learning and continuous improvement!