Every week seems to bring news of another data breach, and it’s no wonder why: it’s harder than ever to keep sensitive data safe. And it’s not just because companies are dealing with more data. Data flows and user roles are constantly changing, and data is stored across different technologies and in cloud environments. Not to mention that compliance requirements are becoming more stringent and sophisticated.
The problem is that while the data landscape has evolved rapidly, conventional strategies for securing that data have become a thing of the past. Gone are the days when data existed in predictable places and access was controlled by a select few. Today, almost every business department needs to use customer data, and implementing AI means huge datasets and a constant stream of permissions, use cases, and tools. Security teams are struggling to implement effective strategies to protect sensitive data, and over the past few years, a new crop of tools called data security platforms have appeared on the scene to close this gap.
One of these players Satoriumclaims that their data security platform can “secure all data, from manufacturing to artificial intelligence.” We wanted to investigate this claim. But first, what does this even mean for security teams? Let’s break it down into two parts: “protecting all data” and “from production to artificial intelligence”.
Safe everything data
When Satori says it protects all data, it means that unlike other data security platforms, Satori focuses on protecting every type of data in an organization, not just a specific subset. Legacy data security solutions, including DSPM (Data Security Posture Management) platforms, primarily focus on protecting analytical data—data typically used for business intelligence or reporting.
However, Satori extends its security to cover operational data, semi-structured data, and other types of data that other platforms may overlook. This comprehensive approach ensures not only the security of your analytics data, but also the protection of all forms of data, including semi-structured data, throughout its lifecycle.
From manufacturing to artificial intelligence
“From manufacturing to artificial intelligence” refers to the security of data throughout the pipeline, from its creation and use in production environments to its application in artificial intelligence models and processes. This is where many data security solutions fall short. Legacy platforms often focus primarily on protecting data in analytic environments such as data lakes, warehouses, and lakes. But they often neglect operational or production data where risks can arise.
For example, developers or engineers may need temporary access to production databases to troubleshoot or perform maintenance. Without proper safeguards, giving them access could lead to overly privileged access, making them an insider threat. Satori’s approach helps reduce this risk by providing tight control over access to sensitive production data, even in temporary or emergency situations.
Moreover, legacy data security solutions neglect BI tools, leaving the implementation of row-level security on these tools to security teams—a daunting task. Satori, on the other hand, supports granular access control to BI tools, allowing security teams to manage access to them along with data stores.
So how does it work?
You can’t protect your data if you don’t know what data you have and where it is. Satori combines the visibility capabilities offered by DSPM that security services require to keep customer data safe. It makes it easy to answer basic data security questions in databases, data warehouses, and data lakes:
- Where is my data (databases, storage, etc.)?
Satori continuously discovers and monitors data.
- Where is my sensitive data?
Satori constantly categorizes data and tags it with the appropriate data type tags.
- Who has access to what data?
Satori analyzes the configuration of your data warehouse to give you control over data access and to understand which users have access to which data.
- Who has access to which sensitive data?
Combined with Satori’s continuous data discovery and classification, you know who has access to a specific database or table and what types of sensitive data are being used.
- Who does what, with what data?
Satori gives you complete monitoring of data activity across all your data stores in a central location. You can easily supplement your audit logs by creating custom access log reports for platforms like Splunk, Snowflake, DataDog, or Elastic. That way, you know exactly what users did with the data, who approved those actions, and what security policies were applied.
In Satori, data stores are discovered automatically by scanning cloud accounts or added directly to the management console, via API or Terraform.
Connect all your cloud accounts to Satori and receive notifications of all new data stores and data assets added to them.
Once discovered, data warehouses are continuously monitored to create a complete inventory of the data assets they contain, classified at the column level using a wide set of standard classifiers or customer-created classifiers.
Mapping the permission structure is performed to show exactly which users have access to which data assets.
Finally, any risky misconfiguration that could compromise their security posture is detected, with warnings for the appropriate teams to fix. Teams can use the Satori Posture Manager to get an overview of your organization’s database user permissions over time:
More than visibility
Most security teams approach data security in a sequential process:
- Display your data
- Determine who has access to what data
- Apply controls to reduce risk and meet compliance requirements
The problem with this approach is that teams often get stuck in Phase 1, falling into a loop as new data stores and users emerge. Satori is overhauling this process by introducing automation at every step. Both the discovery and classification of data and the application of security policies occur in real-time, with automatic adjustments as new data stores are added.
Satori does this easy to force appropriate security measures at scale using:
RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) and ABAC (Attribute-Based Access Control)
Satori enables organizations to apply RBAC and ABAC everywhere, even on platforms that do not have such native support.
You can create masking profiles, which can then be used to create dynamic masking policies.
Temporary data access
When users need access to data, they can get it automatically within a certain period of time. This relieves the organization of super-privileged access to data, one of the main reasons for disclosure of sensitive data.
Fine-grained access control to multiple data stores
For example, you can apply data masking to your Snowflake cloud data, as well as your MSSQL and Postgres databases.
Enforcing approval workflows
In many cases, access to most data sets requires consent from the data owners or data managers. Satori makes it easy to implement such a process directly or by integrating with workflow tools like Jira, ServiceNow, or even Slack.
Final words
From production databases to artificial intelligence models, Satori doesn’t just show you where your data is or who has access to it—it helps you proactively manage it. By automating key tasks such as identifying sensitive data, managing permissions and enforcing access controls, Satori makes data protection simpler and more effective. For security teams, it’s a way to go beyond simply mapping data security risks and actually reduce them.
To learn more about Satori, visit Satori website or schedule a 1:1 demo meeting.
