GigaOm Radar for Data Access Governancev4.0

1. Executive Summary

Data access governance solutions are arguably foremost in importance among data management resources for any organization with even a pretense of being data-centric. They’re indispensable for treating data as an enterprise asset by maximizing its value while reducing the risks of using it—or even just storing it. These offerings are the conduits through which users who need data to do their jobs get timely, secure data access. Additionally, they’re the fulcrum on which any sustainable enterprise endeavors to deliver data privacy, regulatory compliance, and data security hinge.

The ability to accelerate data access in a controlled, safe way makes these platforms valuable to any business end user, from data scientists to domain-specific employees in departments like marketing or sales. Without these platforms’ capabilities, such users are often left waiting for data, delaying time-to-value and compromising investments in data-driven processes. Simultaneously, this technology area is vital to upper-level management, IT teams, and data governance and risk and compliance personnel who depend on it to adhere to regulatory mandates, prevent data breaches, and mitigate the penalties and legal issues that they inevitably herald.

With so much at stake, there’s no shortage of reasons for organizations to employ these offerings. They rely on a plethora of techniques to find data germane to data privacy, regulatory compliance, security, and data governance needs—many of which automate otherwise exhausting, manual processes. In addition to categorizing data according to various levels of sensitivity, specific regulations, and in-house enterprise definitions and business concepts, they map this information to processes and data flows for comprehensive insight into security and compliance measures. Moreover, the best of them are able to translate business needs and data governance rules about who should access (or even view) which data into code that can be deployed to and executed on data sources to enforce those rules as concrete policies.

These policy management capabilities also typify automation, which scales the number of them that can be implemented while simultaneously decreasing the time required to do so. Other useful capabilities include a single-glance overview of the data estate and its sensitive data, real-time awareness of who’s accessing what data, and robust mechanisms for auditing processes and issuing reports to demonstrate compliance to regulators, risk personnel, and security teams.

This report includes specialist vendors that focus on this space and those that provide more general data management capabilities. It also evaluates solutions according to newer developments, such as governance for generative AI, remediation measures for security needs, and analysis of an organization’s overall security position.

This is our fourth year evaluating the data access governance space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.

This GigaOm Radar report examines 15 of the top data access governance solutions and compares offerings against the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) outlined in the companion Key Criteria report. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading data access governance offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.