Multicloud security firm Fortanix Inc. today announced a new integration with data protection firm BigID Inc. that automates discovery, classification and protection of sensitive data.

The integration sees Fortanix’s Data Security Manager and BigID’s data discovery and classification capabilities working together to trigger protection actions automatically whenever sensitive data is classified. The result eliminates manual intervention while maintaining complete audit trails of all data protection activities.

The functionality provided through the integration seeks to assist with the issue whereby large enterprises are facing mounting challenges in managing sensitive data scattered across on-premises, cloud, software-as-a-service and hybrid environments. The sensitive data — be it personal, financial, health or even proprietary information — is also subject to various regulations, meaning that it’s not just a moral but also a legal requirement for businesses to know where data resides and to protect it accordingly.

Fortanix also argues that at the same time, while data security posture management tools effectively identify sensitive data across complex environments, a critical gap exists between discovering the data and protecting it. The fragmentation results in security risk exposure, operational inefficiency and potential compliance failures.

The BigID and Fortanix integration automates the protection of sensitive data by combining BigID’s discovery and classification with Fortanix’s advanced encryption services. The new integration announced today securely connects the two platforms, uses BigID’s personally identifiable information classifiers to create corresponding security objects in Fortanix DSM and then applies encryption via tokenization through Fortanix application programming interfaces in line with pre-set policies.

With the integration, Fortanix says, organizations can now trigger data protection with greater precision to enhance their security posture, support faster compliance and operate efficiently, while unlocking value from their data.

“Enterprises rely on fragmented and siloed security tools that provide separate solutions for discovery, classification, encryption and access control that don’t communicate effectively,” said Chief Product Oficer Anuj Jaiswal. “The integration of BigID’s data discovery and classification capabilities with Fortanix’s… encryption capabilities eliminates manual handoffs between data discovery and protection processes, delivering a comprehensive solution for data visibility and protection.”

Customers of both BigID and Fortanix can now take advantage of discovery to protection automation, eliminating manual steps and security gaps between data discovery and data protection and accelerating compliance with support to quickly apply consistent tokenization policies to sensitive data to meet regulatory requirements and minimize data breach risks through automated remediation.

Additionally, joint customers gain enhanced data utility, with the ability to protect sensitive data elements while preserving data format and utility for analytics or development using Fortanix’s format-preserving tokenization.

Fortanix was previously in the news in June when it announced the launch of PQC Central, a feature in its Key Insight tool that reframes how enterprises approach the post-quantum cryptography challenge.

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