Data Management

The Top 8 Data Centric Audit Protection Software

Discover the Top Data Centric Audit Protection Software with features such as data discovery, policy management, and real-time monitoring and alerting.

Last updated on Sep 12, 2024

Written by Mirren McDade

Technical review by Laura Iannini

The Top 8 Data Centric Audit Protection Software includes:

1. Digital Guardian Data Discovery by Fortra
2. Egnyte
3. FortiGuard DLP Service
4. IBM Guardium Insights
5. Lepide Data Security Platform
6. Oracle Database Security
7. OpenText Voltage SecureData
8. Varonis Data Security Platform

Data Centric Audit and Protection (DCAP) helps teams protect unstructured data by providing real-time analytics, detection, and protection against malicious activity. DCAP tools proactively identify and mitigate risks, ensuring security across storage systems, databases, and Big Data environments.

DCAP tools typically provide features like data discovery, classification, encryption, real-time monitoring, and auditing of data access activities, enabling users to protect confidential information such as financial records, intellectual property, and personal data. This is especially useful for organizations operating in industries with strict regulatory requirements like finance, healthcare, and government. These solutions also track user behaviors and generate detailed reports on who, when, and how data was accessed, allowing organizations to detect unauthorized access or anomalies in real time.

DCAP tools help teams meet compliance standards, prevent data breaches, and equip IT teams with the intelligence to handle potential threats. Selecting the right DCAP tool involves knowing the relevant features and fit for your organization’s security landscape.

We’ve put together a shortlist of the Top Data Centric Audit Protection Software by assessing the solutions currently on the market and evaluating them based on their functionality, robustness, and user experience, as well as our own in-house technical analysis.

Digital Guardian Data Discovery by Fortra

Digital Guardian Data Discovery is a SaaS solution that provides comprehensive visibility and protection for data at rest, leveraging the capabilities of AWS.

What We Like: The platform has effective integration capabilities with the Digital Guardian platform and easy compatibility across leading browsers and operating systems.

Best Features:

Pre-configured policies: Physical appliances come loaded with pre-configured policies and can be easily inserted into existing infrastructure with minimal configuration.
Compliance and auditing: Detailed audit logging and reports make it easy to demonstrate compliance for organizations.
Accurate data classification: The solution discovers and accurately classifies sensitive and regulated data on servers, shares, and databases.
Alerting on policy violations: Files that violate security or compliance policies are flagged, and managers are notified to address the issues.

We Recommend: Best suited for mid-size to large organizations needing robust data discovery and classification with strong audit and compliance features.

Digital Guardian is part of Fortra, serving a wide range of customers and headquartered in the United States. Foundd in 2003.

Egnyte

Egnyte is a cloud-based, AI-driven solution that integrates data discovery, collaboration, and protection into a single platform.

What We Like: Egnyte delivers robust third-party integrations as well as comprehensive data protection and governance features.

Best Features:

Data Security and Governance: Egnyte automates content lifecycle workflows using built-in policies, helping to manage, audit, and generate compliance reports from a unified dashboard.
Unified Data Classification: The solution discovers, classifies, and monitors sensitive data from both on-premises and cloud sources, ensuring continuous data protection.
Granular Permissions: Granular permissions and sharing safeguards prevent unauthorized file access to protect against data leaks.
Content Intelligence Engine: Egnyte’s AI content intelligence engine helps users interact with data through natural language processing and assists in security tasks like unusual behavior detection.

We Recommend: Egnyte is ideal for organizations requiring a unified platform to manage and protect sensitive data across both on-prem and cloud environments. It is particularly useful for those using Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or Salesforce.

Egnyte, founded in 2007, is headquartered in California and serves over 22,000 companies globally.

FortiGuard DLP Service

FortiGuard Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Service is designed to help organizations identify, monitor, and protect sensitive data, while ensuring regulatory compliance.

What We Like: FortiGuard DLP offers centralized policy management and orchestration, integration with the Fortinet Security Fabric, and includes over 500 customizable data patterns and policies.

Best Features:

Centralized Policy Management: Enables teams to easily manage and control data policies across the organization from a central point.
Broad Integration: Supports integration with both on-premises and cloud systems, enhancing visibility and control.
Proactive Data Protection: Helps prevent both accidental and intentional data leakage, safeguarding sensitive information.
Customizable Data Patterns: Offers over 500 customizable data patterns out of the box, reducing the need for constant IT management.

We Recommend: FortiGuard DLP Service is best suited for enterprise organizations looking for a comprehensive data protection solution that integrates seamlessly with other Fortinet products.

Fortinet, founded in 2000 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, has over 755,000 customers worldwide.

IBM Guardium Insights

IBM Guardium Insights is a data security and compliance tool designed to help organizations automate and streamline their processes for data protection and auditing from a single platform.

What We Like: We like IBM Guardium Insights for its centralized hub, which retains and maintains data security and audit data efficiently. It also allows data security specialists to store sensitive data for comprehensive reporting and analytics over a longer timeframe.

Best Features:

Advanced analytics uncover risks: The platform features advanced analytics to help security teams identify areas of risk.
Compliance workspace for easy tracking: A compliance workspace offers an at-a-glance view of compliance programs and tracks audit progress.
Custom reports dashboard: The dashboard tracks user activity, detects suspicious activity, and simplifies report generation.
Pre-built and customizable reports: Users can quickly generate pre-built reports for security and compliance or customize them to meet specific business needs.

We Recommend: This solution is best suited for large or enterprise-scale organizations looking to enhance their data security and compliance programs.

IBM, headquartered in New York, USA, serves thousands of customers worldwide with its data security solutions.

Lepide Data Security Platform

Lepide Data Security Platform is a cloud-based solution offering data auditing, threat detection, data classification, and privileged access management across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

What We Like: It provides comprehensive analysis of user behavior and permissions, along with real-time threat detection.

Best Features:

Locate and classify sensitive data: The platform helps find and classify sensitive and regulated data in both on-premises and cloud environments from the point of creation.
Permission management: It identifies which users have access to sensitive information and offers tools to adjust permissions as required.
Behavior-based access suggestions: Lepide suggests appropriate access levels for users based on their behavior and access patterns.
Real-time threat alerts: The platform generates real-time alerts for detected security threats or anomalies in user interactions.

We Recommend: Ideal for healthcare, finance, and education sectors needing robust data security with real-time threat detection capabilities.

Lepide was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.

Oracle Database Security

Oracle Database Security is a comprehensive solution suite designed to secure and ensure compliance for data stored in Oracle databases, both on-premises and in the cloud.

What We Like: It includes tools for risk assessment, mitigation, and real-time activity auditing coupled with strong encryption and key management.

Best Features:

Risk Mitigation: The Database Security Assessment Tool evaluates security configurations and user activities to identify and mitigate potential risks.
Enterprise-Level Protection: Offers extensive encryption, key management, and data masking capabilities suitable for large-scale enterprise environments.
Sensitive Data Masking: Scans and masks sensitive data in non-production systems to reduce security risks during testing.
Real-Time Auditing: Collects audit data for analysis, alerting, and customizable compliance reporting in real-time.

We Recommend: Oracle Database Security is best suited for large-scale enterprises looking for robust data protection and compliance solutions for their Oracle databases.

Oracle is a global cloud technology company that provides infrastructure and software to organizations worldwide, enabling innovation and efficiency.

OpenText Voltage SecureData

OpenText Voltage SecureData is a scalable data protection solution designed to secure data throughout its entire lifecycle across hybrid IT environments.

What We Like: Voltage SecureData is highly adaptable, supporting a wide range of enterprise systems from legacy to modern. It ensures data protection using format-preserving techniques without compromising usability.

Best Features:

Comprehensive data protection: Utilizes encryption, tokenization, hashing, and masking to meet privacy compliance, payment standards, regulations, and data security needs.
Integration versatility: Compatible with many platforms and technologies through APIs, user-defined functions in databases, file processing, or dataflow interception.
Lifecycle security: Capable of securing data upon ingestion and enabling analysis in its protected form in the cloud.
Payment transaction protection: Provides a complete framework for securing payment transactions in ecommerce, mobile payments, and card-not-present scenarios.

We Recommend: Suitable for enterprises in industries like financial services, insurance, and retail that require robust data protection across diverse IT infrastructures.

OpenText, founded in 1991, is headquartered in Waterloo, Canada, and serves thousands of customers globally.

Varonis Data Security Platform

Varonis Data Security Platform is an AI-powered data security posture management solution that helps organizations protect on-premises, SaaS, and multi-cloud environments by identifying critical data and stopping threats.

What We Like: Varonis is able to secure data across diverse environments and its integration with third-party platforms.

Best Features:

Continuous data scanning: Varonis continuously scans both cloud and on-premise data stores using built-in and custom classifiers.
Access visualization: It provides clear visibility into which users have access to sensitive data, improving data control.
Automated access revocation: AI-driven policies automatically revoke stale, risky, and unnecessary data access, thereby reducing risk.
Behavioral analytics: Varonis creates a behavior baseline for every user and device, generating alerts for abnormal or suspicious behavior.

We Recommend: Best suited for organizations seeking a comprehensive data security posture management platform to safeguard diverse environments and ensure real-time visibility and threat detection.

Varonis Systems is headquartered in New York City and has been identifying abnormal user behavior to prevent cyberattacks since 2005.

The Top 8 Data Centric Audit Protection Software

Everything You Need to Know About Data Centric Audit Protection Software (FAQs)

What Is A Data Centric Audit Protection Tool?

Data-Centric Audit and Protection (DCAP) is a comprehensive approach that focuses on safeguarding sensitive data throughout its lifecycle, which helps organizations to strengthen their cybersecurity posture. DCAP addresses the shortcomings of traditional perimeter-based security approaches by focusing on protecting the data itself, rather than simply reinforcing network boundaries. By adopting DCAP, organizations can mitigate the risks associated with data breaches, insider threats, and unauthorized access, thereby strengthening their overall cybersecurity posture.

A Data-Centric Audit Protection tool is a specialized solution designed to help organizations monitor, protect, and audit data access, usage, and movements across the entire data lifecycle, ensuring compliance with security policies and regulations. These tools integrate with data storage and enterprise systems, providing centralized visibility and control over sensitive data, whether on-premise or in the cloud.

This is an approach to information protection that combines extensive data security and audit functionality with simplified discovery, classification, granular policy controls, user and role-based access, and real-time data and user activity monitoring to help automate data security and regulatory compliance.

How Do Data Centric Audit Protection Tools Work?

Data Centric Audit and Protection tools deploy machine learning and rule-based algorithms to scrutinize data access patterns and flag suspicious activities. They safeguard data across different platforms, whether on-premise or in the cloud – providing protection from data leaks and unauthorized activities. Regular audits are conducted to ensure compliance and detect potential risks.

DCAP tools are useful for protecting confidential information such as financial records, intellectual property, and personal data, especially in industries with strict regulatory requirements like finance, healthcare, and government. By focusing on data protection at the source, these solutions support enhanced security, help to reduce the risks of data breaches, and ensure compliance with laws such as GDPR and HIPAA.

What Features Should You Look For When Choosing Data Centric Audit Protection Software?

When choosing Data Centric Audit Protection Software, the following capabilities should be prioritized:

Data Discovery – This involves identifying and cataloging data across the organization’s systems, whether it be stored in the cloud or on-premises. Doing this means that organizations can more effectively locate and understand where their critical data is kept, ensuring proper protection and compliance with data security regulations.
Data Classification – Being able to categorize data into segments based on sensitivity levels helps to reduce data breaches by ensuring security measures are applied to relevant data sources. Categorizing data based on its sensitivity and importance (such as labeling it confidential, public, or restricted), helps organizations apply the appropriate security controls and access restrictions.
Data Encryption – This is the process of converting sensitive data into an unreadable format to protect it from unauthorized access. This is vital for ensuring that important data is not intercepted or compromised, leading to a security risk. This also helps to maintain compliance with data protection regulations like GDPR and HIPAA.
Real-Time Monitoring and Alerting – Any DCAP tool you implement should continuously tracking data access, usage, and movements, and generating immediate alerts for any suspicious or unauthorized activities, to ensure quick detection and response in the event of a security threat, policy violation, or data breach.
Auditing Of Data Access Activities – By tracking and recording who can access sensitive data, when, and how, organizations can provide a comprehensive log of data interactions, allowing them to detect unauthorized access, identify unusual behavior, and ensure compliance with data protection regulations. Auditing creates accountability and makes it easier to investigate security incidents.
Policy Management – This refers to the process of defining, implementing, and enforcing security policies related to data access, usage, and protection. This ensures that sensitive data is consistently protected according to the organization’s security standards and compliance requirements. Effective policy management minimizes unauthorized access, supports regulatory compliance, and ensures that data protection practices are applied uniformly across all systems.

Mirren McDade

Senior Journalist & Content Writer

Mirren McDade is a senior writer and journalist at Expert Insights, spending each day researching, writing, editing and publishing content, covering a variety of topics and solutions, and interviewing industry experts. She is an experienced copywriter with a background in a range of industries, including cloud business technologies, cloud security, information security and cyber security, and has conducted interviews with several industry experts. Mirren holds a First Class Honors degree in English from Edinburgh Napier University.

Laura Iannini

Cybersecurity Analyst

Laura Iannini is an Information Security Engineer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity from the University of West Florida. Laura has experience with a variety of cybersecurity platforms and leads technical reviews of leading solutions. She conducts thorough product tests to ensure that Expert Insights’ reviews are definitive and insightful.