Data Discovery Platform

TL;DR:

• Strac's Data Discovery Platform revolutionizes data discovery and protection across various environments.
• It provides automated sensitive data classification and tagging using machine learning models.
• Real-time monitoring and alerts help prevent data breaches and insider threats.
• Offers remediation options for compliance with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS.
• Scalable and flexible platform with endpoint coverage and customizable security policies.

As the volume of data within organizations continues to soar, security teams are faced with the daunting challenge of tracking, protecting, and managing sensitive information scattered across various environments. Data discovery is no longer an option; it's a necessity. For organizations that deal with sensitive data like Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Protected Health Information (PHI), it becomes imperative to have an all-encompassing Data Discovery Platform or Data Discovery Solution that provides complete visibility into where sensitive data resides.

Strac has revolutionized the way organizations discover and protect sensitive data across SaaS, cloud platforms, and endpoint devices. In this post, we’ll explore the critical features that any Data Discovery Tool should provide, and we’ll deep dive into how Strac’s Data Discovery Solution solves each of these requirements, ensuring robust data security and compliance.

1. Discover Data Across SaaS, Cloud, and Endpoints Using Our Comprehensive Data Discovery Platform

A robust data discovery platform needs to cover a variety of data sources—ranging from structured databases to unstructured files residing in cloud storage or shared via SaaS applications.

Strac's Approach: Strac provides seamless integration across multiple environments, including cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), SaaS tools (Salesforce, Office 365, Slack, Gmail, Zendesk), and endpoints (Windows, macOS, Linux). This multi-environment compatibility ensures that every corner of your organization is scanned for sensitive data. Whether it’s an employee uploading files to a cloud storage system like Google Drive or sharing PII in Slack channels, Strac can automatically detect and classify this data.

2. Utilize Platform for Automated Sensitive Data Classification and Tagging

The real value of a data discovery platform lies not just in finding the data but also in classifying it accurately. Sensitive data could include credit card numbers, social security numbers, health records, and even API keys or encryption secrets. Each of these data types needs to be identified and tagged appropriately so that organizations can implement security controls effectively.

Strac's Approach: Strac leverages machine learning models to automatically classify sensitive data such as PII, PCI, and PHI. By integrating predefined patterns, including advanced regex-based detection and contextual keyword scanning, Strac ensures that sensitive data is accurately identified even in freeform or unstructured formats. Whether it’s in a PostgreSQL database, S3 buckets, or a Gmail thread, Strac’s automated classification engine tags the data for further action.

Learn more about Strac’s sensitive data discovery and classification.

3. Receive Real-Time Monitoring and Alerts from Our Data Discovery Platform to Stay Informed

A modern data discovery tool should provide real-time alerts when sensitive data is identified or shared inappropriately. This capability is crucial for preventing data breaches, ensuring compliance, and reducing insider threats.

Strac's Approach: Strac’s real-time monitoring engine continuously scans inbound and outbound communications for sensitive data across multiple channels such as emails, cloud file uploads, and API calls. Once sensitive data is detected, it sends alerts to security admins, enabling them to take immediate corrective action. This is especially valuable in preventing inadvertent exposure of sensitive data through misconfigured cloud shares or publicly accessible links in Google Drive, Box, or Office 365.

4. Utilize Platform for Remediation and Ensuring Compliance

Data discovery is incomplete without remediation capabilities. Whether it’s redacting, encrypting, or deleting sensitive data, organizations need options for automated, scalable remediation to ensure they remain compliant with data protection regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS.

Strac's Approach: Strac offers a variety of remediation options once sensitive data is discovered, ranging from automated data masking to redaction and alerting administrators. For example, Strac can automatically revoke public access links in Google Drive or convert them to restricted mode, ensuring data leakage risks are mitigated. In the context of compliance, Strac provides detailed audit logs of each discovery and remediation action, helping security teams maintain compliance with regulatory requirements.

5. Enjoy Scalability and Flexibility with Our Data Discovery Platform

As organizations grow, their data environments expand in complexity. A data discovery platform must scale without significant performance impacts, and it should be flexible enough to accommodate new data sources or environments.

Strac's Approach: Built with scalability in mind, Strac operates effectively across small, medium, and enterprise-scale organizations. Its API-driven architecture makes it easy to integrate with virtually any existing technology stack, ensuring scalable data protection across databases, cloud storage, and endpoint devices. Strac’s flexible deployment options allow for both on-premise and cloud-based setups, catering to businesses with varying compliance and performance requirements.

6. Improve Visibility with Endpoint Coverage Provided by Our Data Discovery Platform

While cloud platforms and SaaS apps often receive most of the attention when it comes to data security, endpoint devices such as employee laptops or desktops are critical vectors for data leakage. Ensuring these endpoints are included in the data discovery pipeline is a must for comprehensive protection.

Strac's Approach: Strac extends its data discovery capabilities to endpoints, enabling organizations to monitor file uploads, downloads, and content viewed on macOS, Windows, and Linux devices. By integrating with inotify on Linux, kernel-level monitoring on Windows, and macOS event monitoring, Strac provides security teams with visibility into data access at the device level, reducing insider threat risks.

7. Customize Policies and Controls to Your Needs with Our Data Discovery Platform

Every organization has different security requirements. A one-size-fits-all solution will often fail to meet specific needs. A data discovery tool should allow organizations to customize security policies, ranging from data retention to access controls based on sensitivity levels.

Strac's Approach: Strac provides an intuitive UI to define custom security policies tailored to specific organizational needs. For example, security teams can set policies to automatically block downloads of sensitive data from Google Drive or flag external sharing in Office 365. This allows organizations to enforce their own security controls while leveraging the robust classification and remediation engine that Strac provides.

Conclusion: Strac—The Leading Data Discovery Platform

In today’s complex data environment, an effective Data Discovery Platform is critical for ensuring the security of sensitive information across cloud platforms, SaaS apps, and endpoints. Strac’s all-in-one solution delivers automated discovery, classification, monitoring, and remediation, providing security teams with the tools they need to protect their most valuable data assets. Whether you are dealing with unstructured data in Slack, public cloud databases like PostgreSQL, or sensitive emails in Gmail, Strac has you covered.

Strac makes data discovery not only feasible but scalable, ensuring that your organization stays compliant, secure, and ready to tackle any data security challenge.