The sensitive data that lives within your organization grows every day, but do you have visibility into where that data is stored, the assets that store the data, who has access to the data, and how it's being used?
Most businesses don’t, and this means they are at risk of two things. Not complying with data privacy regulations in the regions they operate and collect data, as well as falling prey to data breaches and other malicious activities from external sources.
So, what’s the solution? To identify what data your business has and where it lives, a data discovery platform is crucial - giving your business complete visibility into the sensitive data it stores.
Of course, as with any business decision, one of the biggest factors when choosing a data discovery platform is price. In this blog, we take a look at what data discovery actually is, why it’s important, and how much it costs your business.
What is data discovery?
Data discovery is the process of discovering, cataloging and classifying sensitive data across a company’s entire IT infrastructure.
In this process, organizations scan their entire environment to find and identify where structured and unstructured data resides across the business. Typically, this will involve a data discovery software platform, which scans the company’s network, file servers, cloud applications and hardware to find where sensitive data and regulated data is stored.
Data discovery provides organizations with the visibility they need to identify, classify and track sensitive data across the entire business.
Why is data discovery an important part of your data protection strategy?
Data discovery is crucial for any size organization in today’s world, particularly those that deal with large amounts of personally identifiable information (PII). As businesses add new assets, data discovery becomes even more important. That’s because as the organization adds more assets, they add more sensitive data. That increases the company’s attack surface, and risk of data leaks or breaches.
Data discovery gives businesses complete visibility into where sensitive data is located, who has access to it, and gives them insight into the risks associated with that data.
This has two primary benefits:
Better protection of sensitive data
With the data discovery process, businesses know exactly where their sensitive data lives and what levels of risk are associated with it. With that information companies can enhance their cybersecurity measures to ensure all sensitive data is better protected from the threat of outside data breaches and malicious activity.
Comply with data compliance regulations
By gaining complete visibility into what data the business has, where it lives and who has access to it, organizations are able to ensure that it is being handled in a way that meets regulatory compliance requirements - such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
So, how much does a data discovery platform cost?
Most organizations collect, process and store huge quantities of sensitive data across their network. Due to this complexity, data discovery is almost always performed through the use of automated tools known as data discovery software platforms.
Data discovery platforms have a range of functionalities, including:
It’s difficult to put an exact figure on how much data discovery will cost your business. Most data discovery platforms operate under a SaaS model, meaning you typically pay for the software based on the amount of data that you have and the number of users that will be using the platform.
Traditionally, data discovery platforms have been incredibly expensive. Many of these software solutions have been designed with complex functionalities that are difficult to use, with price points that only enterprise organizations would pay for.
Yet, despite this, automated data discovery is crucial for all businesses - not just those with enterprise level spend. In fact it’s fundamental to maintaining basic, good data security hygiene.
This is changing, and now small, medium, large and enterprise organizations all have access to data discovery platforms no matter what their budget is.
Modern data discovery solutions should be right-sized for the business it serves. For example, here at Cavelo we use a pricing model that calculates the platform fee based on the number of data sources (endpoints and hosts) and employees the business has.
This means our innovative data discovery platform is affordable to smaller businesses, and accurate for large businesses. Not only that, but the platform is also scalable, so the solution fits, no matter how many cloud sources, endpoints, devices or employees join the business.
Typically traditional enterprise solutions can cost upwards of $75,000 a year, which is unreasonable for any business that isn’t a large enterprise. By comparison, Cavelo averages around $10,000 a year.
Are you interested in learning how it works? Get a demo of the Cavelo platform today.
