Top 10 Sensitive Data Discovery Tools in 2023

Content

TL;DR

‍Data theft or leak can ruin businesses. Unless you use DLP software, it's difficult to identify potential causes of theft. In this guide, we speak about tools that can help you safeguard company and customer information and trade secrets.

Strac
Forcepoint DLP
Nightfall
Digital Guardian
McAfee
Check Point DLP
Trend Micro Integrated DLP
GTB Technologies
Spirion
Cisco Email Security with DLP

Top 10 Sensitive Data Discovery Tools: Benefits, Work, Challenges

Digital privacy is a must-have. Whether you share your personal and financial details at your bank or make a transaction at a retail store, digitalization has certainly made data security an important part of our lives.

Access to critical information, such as financial records, personal details, or medical information, can draw an accurate picture of your personal and financial well-being, thus raising concerns.

So, how do you ensure your sensitive data remains secure and accessible only with your permission?

Well, this is where sensitive data discovery steps in. Like digital detectives, sensitive data discovery tools uncover hidden information to safeguard privacy. Let’s learn more!

What is Sensitive Data Discovery?

Sensitive data discovery involves identifying sensitive information within a business’s network. They may be found hiding in files, databases, or emails. This process involves using specialized tools and techniques to locate, categorize, and manage sensitive information, ensuring it is properly protected.

How Does Sensitive Data Discovery Work?

Sensitive data refers to important data such as your social security number, credit card information, health records, etc.

These pieces of information are frequently stored on your computer or online in documents, spreadsheets, or databases. Sensitive data discovery tools search these files and databases for patterns and formats that match sensitive data.

For example, upon use, a sensitive data discovery tool raises a red ticket to alarm that you have a document with a string of numbers that matches a credit card number. Similarly, if you have a spreadsheet containing a list of names and medical conditions, the program detects the data's potential sensitivity.

➡️Learn more about sensitive data elements here - Strac’s catalog of sensitive data elements.

Challenges in Sensitive Data Discovery

Sensitive data discovery is tough. Some sensitive data might be hidden in unexpected locations and in various formats, making it a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack. Moreover, sensitive data discovery is governed and, in some geographies, banned, which adds to another layer of complexity.

Cybersecurity and data protection experts continuously develop and update sensitive data discovery tools to address these challenges. Let’s explore the top 10 smart sensitive data discovery tools that identify different types of sensitive data.

Top 10 Sensitive Data Discovery Tools

1.Strac

Strac is known for its seamless integration with cloud and SaaS-based platforms such as Zendesk, Slack, Gmail, Office, Salesforce, ChatGPT, Notion, Box and others. Its real-time abilities and wide coverage of all critical endpoints make it one of the prominent technologies in the data discovery space.

➡️Learn more about all of Strac’s Integrations here.

The platform ensures compliance with PCI, SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, NIST CSF, and NIST 800-53. Users can specify their own rules for data access, when and what to redact, and more. They can also specify who should get audit reports.

A few other key features of Strac are as follows:

Strac demonstrates highly accurate detection and redaction capabilities. It achieves so through its superior machine learning models.
It can detect or redact textual comments along with unstructured documents of any kind (.pdf, .jpeg, .png, images, screenshots, Word docs, Excel files and more)
Strac has the DLP solution for Generative AI products like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and API access to detect and redact sensitive data before sending that data to LLM (Large Language Model) providers like OpenAI or AWS Bedrock.

Checkout their API Docs here.

Strac has out-of-the-box classifiers/detectors for PCI, HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR, NIST CSF data elements. And a robust platform to customize any confidential or sensitive data.
Strac provides comprehensive reports to protect sensitive data flowing through SaaS apps.

Reviews

The software enjoys an average of 5 on G2. Here is what clients have to say:

2.Forcepoint DLP

Forcepoint has machine learning capabilities that allow detection of sensitive data and implement features for policy enforcement through its cloud data loss prevention software solution.

Some of the notable capabilities of Forcepoint are as follows:

Single-vendor SASE that unifies SD-WAN and SSE.
Distributed enforcement.
Risk-adaptive protection
Cloud-native hyper-scaler built for continuous availability.

Nightfall

Nightfall leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify critical business data for sensitive information discovery. For instance, its AI-powered cloud native ecosystem makes its customers’ lives easier to discover, classify, and protect sensitive data in any environment. One can integrate the platform with tools like GitHub and Slack.

Reviews

The software enjoys an average of 4.6 on G2. Here is what clients have to say:

4.Digital Guardian

Digital Guardian is a platform that focuses on locating and protecting sensitive data, whether structured or not. A few key features of the platform are:

Digital Guardian offers data classification solutions.
The cloud service eliminates the complexities of stand-alone machines.
Analytics and reporting capabilities.

Reviews

Digital Guardian scores an average of 4.5 on G2.

5.McAfee

McAfee is a data loss prevention software that protects sensitive data—info that might be present at any endpoint—and assures compliance to protect intellectual property. Low-maintenance equipment (physical or virtual) and the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) platform are used to deliver the McAfee DLP for faster deployment, management, upgrades, and reports.

Some of the features of McAfee are:

Visibility on how data usage and leakage.
Scan feature
Location and application tagging.

Review‍

The product scores an average of 4.5 on G2.

6.Check Point Data Loss Protection

Check Point Data Loss Prevention (DLP) prevents the unintended loss of sensitive data. The solution is compatible with Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW) from Check Point and is known for its features like:

360^O visibility and reporting
Custom DLP capabilities
Offers real-time monitoring.

Reviews

The product scores an average of 4.6 on G2.

7.Trend Micro Integrated Data Loss Prevention

Trend Micro's Integrated DLP program combines DLP with its online security software solution. The company offers protection with centralized management, cloud application access control, visibility, and customizable deployment choices. Trend Micro Integrated Data Loss Prevention doesn’t have major differentiators. However, here are a few of them.

Mobile security
Endpoint encryption
Sandbox as a service
Web Gateway Security
Email and collaboration security
Managed detection and prevention

Reviews

Trend Micro scores an average of 4 on G2. Here is a screenshot of the latest reviews about the product.

8.GTB Technologies

GTB Technologies offers detection capabilities using proprietary detection algorithms. Available in all the major operating systems, their DLP security engine detects structured and unstructured data at the binary level.

Some of the features to be considered here are:

Endpoint protection with OPSWAT-certified OFF-Premise, real-time fingerprint detection that no other solution can control.
Data discovery, eDiscovery, and Data Classification are all automatic, real-time - with OCR detection.

Reviews‍

Not available.

9.Spirion

Spirion is a software solution marketplace segmented based on deployment type, solution type, end-user industry, and geography. The company follows a simple workflow - data classification, monitoring and controlling, identifying violations of policies, enforcing remediation, and creating reports. Spirion offers sensitive data discovery and classification specifically designed to locate and secure PII and PHI.

Here are a few features of Spirion:

Searches for all sensitive and confidential information across the IT infrastructure.
Performs data classification
Remediates data
Provides an intuitive central console

Reviews

‍Spirion scores an average of 4.5 on G2.

10.Cisco Email Security with Data Loss Prevention

Cisco offers a combination of AI, machine learning, and data-tracking technologies to assist firms in managing compliance standards. It enables sensitive data discovery through the Content Intelligence Engine.

Some of the capabilities of Cisco are: