By Kasturi Datta |
Soleno Therapeutics, a rare-disease biotech firm based in California, USA, has deployed Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview Suite to strengthen security and information governance while remaining focused on patient research and outreach.
Soleno’s work on rare diseases involves real patients and highly sensitive data, so security is a business imperative. Working with Microsoft partner Netwoven, the firm has improved visibility, governance and consistency, according to a story about the deployment on the Microsoft website.
“Some of the most critical assets for our organisation include clinical, regulatory, legal and financial data,” said Saj Vajha, vice president and head of IT at Soleno Therapeutics. “Protecting that information is essential to our mission.”
Microsoft Defender provides an integrated control layer to protect users, endpoints, email and collaboration data, including AI usage through Microsoft 365 Copilot. Purview Suite capabilities allow Soleno to classify and control data in a way that is appropriate for its highly regulated industry.
The deployment also helps Soleno to address different regional requirements. For example, when preparing submission documents to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the firm has been able to remove watermarks on official filings, as required by EMA, using Purview Suite’s dedicated labelling capability, rather than a painstaking manual process. And Microsoft’s Multi-Geo capabilities have allowed Soleno to create a separate environment for its Dublin team that aligns with EU data requirements.
Soleno’s small IT team has also benefited from the change, as policies can be enforced across the organisation, in an environment that is organised, well‑governed, more consistent and better aligned with compliance objectives. “We started this journey buried in SharePoint tickets,” said Vajha. “I don’t get them anymore; that’s the foundation that makes everything else possible.”
Soleno is now also expanding its use of Microsoft Viva and evaluating Microsoft Sentinel for centralised security information and event management capabilities, to expand threat visibility to the firm’s full technology stack.