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Proofpoint is set to acquire Normalyze, a major player in data security posture management, with the deal expected to close in November.
This step comes at a crucial time. These days, teams are building cloud applications left and right, and departments are subscribing to SaaS tools without going through IT. This has left security teams scrambling to track sensitive data across all these cloud services.
By bringing Normalyze's AI-powered technology into the fold, Proofpoint is strengthening its security platform. They will now be able to help businesses discover, classify and secure their data across almost any environment – whether that's in SaaS applications, the public cloud, private servers or a combination of everything. The focus is on addressing security risks that stem from human behavior, which is often the weakest link in data security.
Cloud security is at a crossroads
The emergence of artificial intelligence and generative technologies has changed the way organizations innovate, but it has also made the human factor in data security more important than ever. As companies rapidly adopt AI platforms, cloud databases (DBaaS) and modern development practices (CI/CD), security teams face new and intimidating challenges in protecting increasingly interconnected data environments.
This technology race has created a complex web of security risks, especially since development teams sometimes prioritize speed to market over security protocols. As human and automated access to data expands, security teams often struggle to maintain proper visibility and control without appropriate governance measures in place.
The stakes are high – recent research from the Enterprise Strategy Group revealed that more than 25% of companies cannot accurately locate their sensitive data. This lack of visibility, combined with issues such as forgotten data sets, misclassified information, and excessive access privileges, has dramatically increased the risk of a data breach.
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) technology has emerged as a critical solution that helps organizations address vulnerabilities resulting from human interaction with complex data environments while reducing overall attack surfaces. It enables companies to maintain the speed of innovation while ensuring that their valuable data is protected.
Strategic response to data proliferation
“Today, data is at risk due to human behavior. Modern applications are changing rapidly, driven by small teams of developers working independently on microservices and disparate data sources, leading to Data Explosion.” “These modern applications are highly interconnected, making it difficult for security teams to manage the increasingly heterogeneous sprawl of their data. By combining Proofpoint's leading human-centric security platform with Normalyze's leading DPSM technology, we can provide our customers with comprehensive visibility and control over the state of their data so they can further mitigate human risk across their organization.
Security teams face increasing challenges as organizations rapidly evolve their cloud applications while business units independently adopt SaaS solutions, according to Normalyze CTO and co-founder Ravi Ethal. This decentralized approach to technology adoption has created significant blind spots, making it increasingly difficult for security teams to maintain visibility and control of sensitive data across cloud environments.
“As data security becomes more difficult, the driving force behind our mission and technology has been to help organizations secure the data that matters to them, wherever it resides,” says Ethal. “By joining forces with Proofpoint, we can enable organizations to improve their data security posture, reduce the risk of data breaches caused by human error and help them prioritize data loss threats.”
The Normalyze DSPM platform combines data discovery, access management, and risk assessment capabilities to help organizations manage their data security. Key features of the platform include an AI scanner that identifies sensitive data across environments, while assessment tools identify potential vulnerabilities and quantify the potential impacts of data loss.
The platform provides automated remediation guidance and compliance monitoring across multiple standards, covering on-premises and cloud environments. These capabilities are expected to be integrated into Proofpoint's security portfolio after the acquisition is completed.
Read more about how and why cybersecurity and application and service integration are the top IT priorities and challenges these days.
