BigID
In today’s data-driven world, organizations face an unprecedented challenge: managing vast oceans of data while protecting privacy and maintaining compliance with ever-evolving regulations. Enter BigID, a revolutionary platform transforming how enterprises discover, analyze, and secure their sensitive data assets.
Before you can protect your data, you need to know what you have and where it lives. This fundamental challenge has become exponentially more complex as data volumes explode across diverse environments—from legacy databases to cloud data lakes, SaaS applications to NoSQL repositories.
Many organizations still rely on manual processes or outdated catalog tools that provide only surface-level insights, leaving them vulnerable to compliance violations, data breaches, and inefficient data management practices.
BigID emerged as a response to this growing challenge, pioneering what it calls “data intelligence”—a comprehensive approach that goes beyond traditional data discovery methods. Founded in 2016 by Dimitri Sirota and Nimrod Vax, BigID quickly established itself as a leader in the data privacy and protection space.
At its heart, BigID leverages advanced machine learning and identity intelligence to identify and classify sensitive data across an organization’s entire data ecosystem. Unlike conventional pattern-matching approaches, BigID’s ML algorithms understand context and relationships, dramatically improving accuracy in identifying personal and sensitive data.
The platform can detect:
- Personally identifiable information (PII)
- Protected health information (PHI)
- Payment card information (PCI)
- Intellectual property
- Custom-defined sensitive data types
This AI-powered approach reduces false positives by up to 95% compared to traditional methods—a game-changer for organizations drowning in alert fatigue.
BigID’s architecture was built for modern, distributed data environments. The platform connects to virtually any data source:
- Structured databases (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL)
- Cloud data warehouses (Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery)
- Data lakes (Databricks, AWS S3, Azure Data Lake)
- Unstructured file systems (SharePoint, OneDrive, local file shares)
- SaaS applications (Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow)
- NoSQL and big data platforms (MongoDB, Cassandra, Hadoop)
This comprehensive coverage eliminates blind spots that plague many data governance initiatives.
With regulations like GDPR and CCPA/CPRA giving individuals rights to access, correct, and delete their personal data, organizations need efficient mechanisms to respond to these requests. BigID automates this process by:
- Quickly locating all instances of an individual’s data across systems
- Providing workflow automation for request handling
- Maintaining an auditable trail of request fulfillment
- Enabling secure data access for verification purposes
This automation turns what could be a weeks-long manual process into a streamlined operation, saving considerable time and resources.
Understanding risk exposure is critical in today’s security landscape. BigID provides detailed risk insights through:
- Risk scoring based on data sensitivity and exposure
- Identification of over-privileged access rights
- Detection of anomalous data access patterns
- Highlighting regulatory compliance gaps
- Uncovering shadow IT and unauthorized data copies
These capabilities enable security and privacy teams to prioritize remediation efforts where they matter most.
A global financial services company facing GDPR compliance challenges deployed BigID to scan over 30 petabytes of data across 200+ systems. The platform discovered 45% more personal data than previously identified through manual methods, enabling the company to implement proper controls and avoid potential fines that could have reached millions.
A healthcare organization used BigID to identify redundant, obsolete, and trivial (ROT) data containing sensitive patient information. By discovering and securely disposing of unnecessary data copies, they reduced storage costs by 28% while simultaneously decreasing their breach risk surface.
Before migrating to cloud data warehouses, a retail company leveraged BigID to identify and classify sensitive data in legacy systems. This enabled them to implement appropriate encryption, masking, and access controls from day one in their cloud environment, preventing potential data exposure during the transition.
A manufacturing firm used BigID’s discovery capabilities to create a comprehensive data map that fed into their analytics strategy. By understanding exactly what data they had and where it lived, they could confidently establish governed data pipelines that respected privacy requirements while fueling innovation.
BigID excels at integrating with existing data tools and platforms:
- Data Catalogs: Enhances solutions like Collibra and Alation with deep data intelligence
- Data Governance Tools: Complements Informatica and IBM offerings with precise sensitive data identification
- Cloud Security: Works alongside tools like Wiz, Prisma Cloud, and CSPM solutions
- IAM Systems: Integrates with Okta, SailPoint, and other identity providers to align data access with identity governance
- SIEM & Security Analytics: Feeds sensitive data context to platforms like Splunk and QRadar
These integrations create a data intelligence fabric that extends throughout the organization’s technology ecosystem.
While BigID’s technology is powerful, successful implementations require a thoughtful approach:
- Start with High-Value Use Cases: Begin with specific compliance requirements or security initiatives rather than boiling the ocean
- Phased Deployment: Implement across prioritized data sources, expanding coverage methodically
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Involve privacy, security, data governance, and business teams
- Establish Governance Processes: Define workflows for handling discovered issues
- Measure and Optimize: Track key metrics like reduction in unknown sensitive data and improvement in response times
As organizations continue their digital transformation journeys, platforms like BigID are evolving to meet emerging challenges:
- Extended Access Intelligence: Going beyond discovery to optimize who has access to what data and why
- Data Ethics and AI Governance: Helping ensure responsible use of data in machine learning initiatives
- Privacy by Design: Enabling privacy considerations to be built into new systems from inception
- Autonomous Data Operations: Moving toward self-healing data environments that automatically remediate issues
In a world where data volumes continue to explode and privacy regulations multiply, solutions like BigID have become essential components of a mature data management strategy. By providing comprehensive visibility and intelligent controls, BigID enables organizations to unlock the value of their data while maintaining privacy, security, and compliance.
Whether you’re starting your data governance journey or looking to enhance existing capabilities, BigID represents a powerful approach to transforming data from a potential liability into a well-governed asset that can drive innovation with confidence.
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