DataGuise, a provider of data security and privacy solutions for enterprises, has announced theDataGuise Know Your Data program. The Know Your Data program is intended to help organizations pinpoint the location of credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, addresses, salaries, and other sensitive content stored throughout the enterprise to secure it from unauthorized access. The new program combines existing DataGuise software with onsite consulting services to help customers deploy an automated process of discovering where sensitive data is located, and then masking it to ensure data privacy.
The program uses the company's dgDiscover software to automate the process of discovering where sensitive data is located. According to the vendor, DataGuise consultants arrive onsite and perform a comprehensive analysis for up to three days to review findings and develop recommendations. Using dgDiscover, they search both structured and unstructured data repositories to locate content in databases, spreadsheets, word documents, PDF and XML files. Upon completion of discovery, dgDiscover classifies information using different levels of risk, and presents this in a sensitive data discovery dashboard. Once analysis is complete, processes and procedures are recommended to protect sensitive data based on the level of risk that unauthorized access to it would present.
Once specific data sources have been targeted for protection, the DataGuise dgMasker Suite provides advanced database masking capabilities to secure the data. Data masking transforms data values but maintains their referential integrity and, unlike data encryption, does not require the use of a key to decrypt the data. This removes the need for determining which people in the organization can be trusted with a key because no key is required or used.
Joe Lawless, vice president of sales and marketing for DataGuise, tells 5 Minute Briefing that "many companies can benefit from this service because they simply don't know where all of their sensitive data is located. For example, DataGuise has some customers that are running 20-30 different instances of a production database for testing and development purposes. Much of the data in these instances may be sensitive and require masking, but first needs to be discovered and identified. DataGuise provides the ideal solution for this because its software has been developed from the ground up specifically for data discovery and masking." For more information about DataGuise and the Know Your Data Program, go here.