Sensitive data discovery tools automatically scan vast data stores to locate and classify confidential information like PII for compliance and security.
Why sensitive data discovery tools are crucial
Organizations today manage vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like financial records, social security numbers, medical records and much more. In vast enterprise-scale data repositories, this data can literally reside anywhere, making manual identification and classification error-prone and prohibitively time- and resource-intensive.
Sensitive data discovery tools are essential for navigating this complex and often murky data landscape. Such tools act like searchlights, illuminating hidden pockets of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and other sensitive data within an organization's systems.
The growing demand for sensitive data discovery is driven by many factors. Regulations like GDPR, CPRA, and HIPAA impose strict guidelines for handling sensitive data. Yet organizations can’t comply with these laws if they don’t know where their confidential data is. By pinpointing the location of PII, sensitive data discovery tools play a critical role in achieving and maintaining compliance. Once sensitive data is identified, organizations can implement appropriate safeguards, such as data anonymization, to meet relevant legal and regulatory requirements.
Beyond compliance, sensitive data discovery tools are vital for data protection and security. Data breaches can be devastating, leading to financial losses and reputational damage. By proactively identifying sensitive data, organizations can prioritize security measures and reduce the risk of breaches. What’s more, sensitive data discovery tools help mitigate insider threats by revealing information that unauthorized users shouldn't access, preventing its potential misuse.
Overall, sensitive data discovery tools empower organizations to locate, protect, and manage their PII more effectively.
How sensitive data discovery works
Traditionally, finding sensitive data was a laborious manual task. Teams of analysts interviewed workers in relevant departments to identify data sources, scoured databases to collect samples, and assembled manual inventories of sensitive data. As you might expect, this approach was slow, error-prone, and didn’t scale well with growing data volumes.
Modern sensitive data discovery tools leverage automation and AI by continuously scanning vast amounts of data across an organization's systems. They employ pre-defined patterns and rules to identify sensitive information and use AI to analyze data context to improve accuracy. Once the personal data is identified, it can be obfuscated on-the-fly using data masking and other techniques.
Yet while predefined rules can effectively find specific data formats like credit card numbers, they struggle with unstructured text or variations. Generative AI fills this gap by analyzing the context of data to identify even complex PII. For instance, it can recognize a name in an email or scanned document. However, AI may misclassify some data. To ensure accuracy, there should always be a human in the loop to review the final results, correct any errors, and confirm the identified PII. This combination of AI and human expertise offers the most comprehensive and reliable form of sensitive data discovery.
Top 7 sensitive data discovery challenges
For any organization, effectively pinpointing sensitive information comes with its own set of hurdles. Here are the seven biggest challenges organizations face in their sensitive data discovery efforts:
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Data explosion
The sheer volume of data stored by organizations renders manual PII discovery essentially impossible and even automated discovery challenging. PII masking in an ever-expanding sea of data is no mean feat.
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Data diversity
There are many different types of data sources that need to be scanned: structured and unstructured databases, internal and external knowledge bases, and more. Each requires its own tooling, licensing, training, operation, and maintenance.
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Data silos and variety
Because PII can reside anywhere – databases, documents, emails, cloud storage, you name it – sensitive data discovery tools must navigate through diverse locations and data formats to ensure complete identification.
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Evolving regulations
Regulations like GDPR, CPRA, and HIPAA are regularly updated. Sensitive data discovery tools need to adapt to these changes, identify newly classified sensitive data types, and then rank their degree of sensitivity as high or low risk PII.
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Context and accuracy
Generative AI-powered tools are subject to hallucinations. They can misinterpret data or miss sensitive information due to lack of context. To some extent, human interaction is crucial to ensure accurate identification.
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Dark data
The use of unauthorized applications and cloud storage creates blind spots for discovery tools. Organizations need to find ways to identify and monitor dark data to ensure sensitive data isn't stored there undetected.
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Accidental exposure
Human error can lead to accidental leaks of PII. Sensitive data discovery tools can help identify misconfigured systems or user mistakes that expose personal information, but ongoing security training plays a vital role in preventing these incidents.
Vendors of sensitive data discovery tools
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K2view
K2view data masking technology is ideal for enterprises with complex data environments. K2view PII discovery starts by creating a data catalog, which automatically identifies and classifies PII using a combination of regular expressions, rule sets and generative AI, then masks it inflight via one of many different built-in masking techniques. On peer review sites, international enterprises rate K2view as rich in functionality and features.
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OneTrust Privacy and Data Governance Cloud
OneTrust facilitates data privacy and governance through automation. It enables organizations to gain a clear picture of their data landscape, ensuring compliance with regulations and reducing potential security issues. Key features include interactive data visualization dashboards, seamless integration with third-party data catalogs, and a comprehensive suite of compliance management tools.
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IBM Guardium
Guardium offers a multi-layered approach to protecting sensitive information. It can find hidden sensitive data, identify unauthorized copies of data, and encrypt data for added security. It also monitors data access to ensure compliance with regulations, making it useful for organizations that handle PII.
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Spirion Sensitive Data Manager
Spiron provides a two-pronged approach for data security – with or without agents. It assists security efforts by monitoring file integrity and identifying vulnerabilities, making it appropriate for mid-sized organizations.
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Thales CipherTrust Data Discovery and Classification
Thales stands out for its data discovery and classification tools. Deployable on-prem or in the cloud, they ensure consistent security management across the data landscape.
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Rubrik Sensitive Data Monitoring
Leveraging existing Rubrik infrastructure, this solution uncovers, categorizes, and generates reports on sensitive data, without interfering with operations. It helps users gain insights into the types and whereabouts of sensitive data, to facilitate adherence to regulations.
Why K2view is first on the list
K2view data masking tools are proven guardians of PII that enable enterprises to discover and hide sensitive data while preserving its usefulness for software testing and analysis. Advanced methods, like dynamic data masking, create a sweet spot between robust protection and maintaining data accessibility for authorized users.
Unique data masking technology discovers, ingests, organizes, and masks sensitive data on the fly, allowing authorized users to work with the masked data related to a specific business entity (say, a single customer) while safeguarding sensitive information and maintaining compliance.
K2view has sensitive data discovery tools built-in to its data masking suite – uniquely safeguarding PII with an innovative entity-based approach to discovery, alongside advanced data masking techniques. They employ a sophisticated discovery process specifically designed to identify PII wherever it may be: in structured and unstructured databases, message busses, knowledge base documents, and more.
Learn more about K2view data masking tools with sensitive data discovery built in.
