Every week seems to bring news of another data breach, and it's no surprise why: securing sensitive data has become harder than ever. And it's not just because companies are dealing with orders of magnitude more data. Data flows and user roles are constantly shifting, and data is stored across multiple technologies and cloud environments. Not to mention, compliance requirements are only getting stricter and more elaborate.
The problem is that while the data landscape has evolved rapidly, the usual strategies for securing that data are stuck in the past. Gone are the days when data lived in predictable places, with access controlled by a chosen few. Today, practically every department in the business needs to use customer data, and AI adoption means huge datasets, and a constant flux of permissions, use cases, and tools. Security teams are struggling to implement effective strategies for securing sensitive data, and a new crop of tools, called data security platforms, have appeared on the scene in the past few years to address the gap.
One of these players, Satori, claims their data security platform can "secure all data, from production to AI". We wanted to investigate this claim. But first, what does that even mean for security teams? Let's break it down into two parts: "secure all data" and "from production to AI."
Secure all data
When Satori says it secures all data, it means that unlike other data security platforms, Satori focuses on securing every type of data within an organization, not just a specific subset. Legacy data security solutions, including DSPM (Data Security Posture Management) platforms, primarily focus on securing analytical data -- data that is typically used for business intelligence or reporting.
However, Satori extends its security to cover operational data, semi-structured data, and other data types that other platforms may overlook. This comprehensive approach ensures that not only is your analytical data secure, but all forms of data, including semi-structured, are protected throughout their lifecycle.
From Production to AI
"From production to AI" refers to the security of data across the entire pipeline, from its creation and use in production environments to its application in AI models and processes. This is where many data security solutions fall short. Legacy platforms often focus primarily on securing data in analytical environments like data lakes, warehouses, and lakehouses. 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 address issues or perform maintenance. Without proper safeguards, giving them access can lead to over-privileged access, making them an internal threat. Satori's approach helps mitigate this risk by ensuring that access to sensitive production data is tightly controlled, even for temporary or emergency situations.
Furthermore, legacy data security solutions neglect BI tools, leaving implementation of row-level security on these tools to security teams - not a simple task. Satori, on the other hand, supports fine-grained access control on BI tools, allowing security teams to manage access to them alongside data stores.
So how does it work?
You can't secure data if you don't know what data you have and where it's located. Satori combines the visibility capabilities offered by DSPMs, which are required by security teams to secure customer data. This makes it easy to answer the primary data security questions across databases, data warehouses, and data lakes:
In Satori, data stores are discovered automatically by scanning cloud accounts or added directly in the management console, via API or with Terraform.
Connect all of your cloud accounts to Satori and receive notifications for all of the new data stores and data assets added to them.
Once discovered, data stores are continuously monitored to produce a full inventory of the data assets they contain, classified to the column level with a broad set of out-of-the-box or customer-built classifiers.
A mapping of the permissions structure is performed to clearly show which users have access to what data assets.
Finally, any risky misconfiguration that may degrade their security posture is detected, with alerts produced for the relevant teams to remediate. Teams can use Satori's posture manager to get an overview of your organization's database user permissions over time:
More than visibility
Most security teams go about tackling the data security challenge in a sequential process:
The problem with this approach is that teams often get stuck in step 1, getting caught in a loop as new data stores and users are introduced. Satori overhauls this process by introducing automation at every step. Both the work of discovering and classifying data and the enforcement of security policies happen in real time, adjusting automatically as new data stores are added.
Satori makes it easy to enforce the appropriate security controls at scale, using:
RBAC (role-based access control) and ABAC (attribute-based access control)
Satori allows organizations to apply RBAC and ABAC universally, 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 for a set amount of time. This relieves the organization of over-privileged data access, one of the main root causes of sensitive data exposure.
Fine-grained access control across multiple data stores
For example, you can apply data masking to your Snowflake cloud data, as well as your MSSQL and Postgres databases.
Enforcement of approval workflows
In many cases, access to most datasets requires approval from data owners or data stewards. Satori makes it easy to implement such a process directly or by integrating with workflow tools like Jira, ServiceNow, or even Slack.
Final words
Satori doesn't just show you where your data is or who has access to it -- it helps you actively control it, from production databases to AI models. By automating key tasks like discovering sensitive data, managing permissions, and enforcing access controls, Satori makes protecting data simpler and more effective. For security teams, it's a way to move beyond just mapping data security risks and actually mitigate them.
