MinerEye launches AI-powered Data Tracker to bolster GDPR compliance
With the May 25 deadline for the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) fast approaching, a new tool from Israel-based MinerEye uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help identify all the data in your organization that needs protection under the new rules.
Ahead of the RSA conference in San Francisco, MinerEye has launched its Data Tracker solution, which automates the process for detecting, tracking, and securing sensitive assets. According to a MinerEye press release, it can be used with unstructured and dark data, and can be leveraged as part of compliant cloud migration.
"Companies cannot protect, manage or utilize information they can't find," MinerEye CEO and co-founder Yaniv Avidan said in the release. "Using our Interpretive AITM, MinerEye fuses computer vision and machine learning to track information at the byte and pixel level, which no other solution has achieved."
SEE: IT leader's guide to big data security (Tech Pro Research)
The idea behind the product is that, if you can't find the data, you can't protect it. And data storage often isn't as straightforward as it could be. Whether someone saved multiple copies of a file, exported it as a PDF or other file version, or pulled some of the data for a presentation, data is often hidden in many place throughout an organization.
"Companies use multiple platforms to store the data, multiple ways to share the data, and multiple ways to represent the data," Avidan told ZDNet.
Traditional approaches to data discovery use rules, keywords, and dictionaries to find and sort data, but that doesn't work with modern, unstructured datasets, Avidan said. Businesses need tools that can look at a files associated text, image, file type, and more to determine how it should be categorized.
MinerEye works specifically to categorize data that hasn't been pre-specified, the release said. It can detect and group files such as sensitive contracts, customer complaints, log files, corporate M&A documents, and legacy employee information.
The tool can also help identify and eliminate redundant data to free up storage and save "millions of dollars," the release said. Avidan said that he refers to this process as getting rid of the noise, and that it is the first step to GDPR compliance. After that data is minimized, you can identify the "crown jewels" and put in place the proper protection methods.
For consolidation, MinerEye Data Tracker already works with Microsoft Azure, OneDrive, Box, and a few others. However, Avidan said, the next release will target other major cloud providers and storage vendors, and the company wants to eventually "connect to every storage that is available."
That elimination of redundancies also helps fast track cloud migration, the release said. The system doesn't move, open, or alter data in any way. It just reads the bytes and makes suggestions to the user.
The MinerEye Data Tracker is encapsulated in an open virtual machine, Avidan told ZDNet, and the installation package configuration is very straightforward. You just need to point the system to scan the proper file repositories from remote. The whole process takes about 15 minutes, Avidan said.
The tool can take up to 10 days to learn the entire data landscape of the organization, depending on how distributed it is, Avidan said. It leaves no footprint on the network or storage and can support up to 120 terabytes of data throughout its lifecycle, according to the release.
Interested companies can request a demo here.
Also see
- 60 ways to get the most value from your big data initiatives (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
- GDPR: Two thirds of organisations aren't prepared for the 'right to be forgotten' (ZDNet)
- EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): A cheat sheet (TechRepublic)
- GDPR: Deadline looms but businesses still aren't ready (ZDNet)
- Top 5: Things you should know about GDPR (TechRepublic)