Feeling overwhelmed by the challenge of protecting sensitive data across a sprawling network of cloud apps, on-premise databases, and legacy mainframes? You're not alone. In an era of constant cyber threats and tightening regulations, choosing the right Data Security Platform (DSP) isn't just an IT decision – it's a critical business strategy.
Many organizations struggle with fragmented security tools, a lack of visibility into their sensitive data, and the difficulty of enforcing consistent policies across hybrid environments.
This guide cuts through the noise, offering a direct, head-to-head comparison of two leading DSPs: DataStealth and Varonis. We'll break down their core philosophies, key features, and fundamental differences to help you decide which platform truly offers the robust, frictionless security your organization needs.
Ready to secure your data from the inside out? Get started with our top-rated DSP, DataStealth.
What is a Data Security Platform (DSP)?
According to Forrester, Data Security Platforms (DSPs) are used to support and sustain compliance with privacy and sector-specific regulations, adopt a data-centric approach to security, and align data-centric controls to mitigate defined data risks. A DSP consolidates discovery, classification, and policy-enforced protection into a single, cohesive platform, leveraging data protection mechanisms such as vaulted tokenization, encryption, and masking.
Think of it like this: a home security camera (DSPM) can alert you that an intruder is inside, and a strong door (DLP) can try to stop them from leaving with your valuables. A DSP, however, is like a secure vault that makes your valuables useless to the intruder even if they get their hands on them.
What are the Benefits of Using a DSP?
Implementing a comprehensive DSP offers significant advantages for any organization handling sensitive data:
- Achieve Proactive Data-Centric Security: A DSP protects the data element itself, not just the systems around it. This means even if a file is leaked, the sensitive information within it remains useless to attackers.
- Meet and Simplify Compliance: By actively protecting data, DSPs help you meet stringent regulatory requirements like PCI DSS, GDPR, and HIPAA, often dramatically reducing your audit scope.
- Enable Zero Trust Architecture: A core principle of Zero Trust is to protect the data itself. A DSP is the ultimate tool for implementing a data-centric security model where access is granted on a least-privilege, "need-to-know" basis.
- Unify Security Across All Environments: Whether your data is in a modern cloud data lake, a SaaS application, or a 40-year-old mainframe, a DSP can apply consistent security policies everywhere.
What Features Should a DSP Have?
When evaluating a DSP, look for these essential capabilities:
- Data Discovery and Classification: The platform must be able to automatically find all your sensitive data – structured, unstructured, and semi-structured – across both known and unknown repositories.
- Active Data Protection: The platform must go beyond simply monitoring and provide active protection methods like encryption, tokenization and dynamic data masking to de-identify sensitive data.
- Centralized Policy Enforcement: You need the ability to define security and access policies in one place and have them consistently enforced across all your systems, from cloud to on-premise.
- Frictionless, In-Line Deployment: The best DSPs integrate seamlessly into your existing infrastructure without requiring disruptive code changes, APIs, or software agents, especially for legacy systems.
- Fine-Grained Access Controls: The platform should support both role-based (RBAC) and attribute-based (ABAC) access controls, allowing you to grant access based on user role, location, device, and other contextual attributes.
DataStealth vs. Varonis
DataStealth vs Varonis: Head-to-Head Comparison
| Capability |
DataStealth |
Varonis |
| Core Philosophy |
Data-Centric Zero Trust: Protects the data itself, assuming a breach is inevitable. The goal is to make sensitive data useless to attackers if exfiltrated. |
Access Control & Visibility: Focuses on controlling the movement and access to data. The goal is to prevent breaches by monitoring who has access and how they use it. |
| Deployment & Integration |
Frictionless & In-Line: Deploys as a proxy via a simple DNS change, sitting in the line of traffic. Requires no code changes, APIs, or agents. |
Agent-Based & Complex: Deployment is resource-intensive and requires significant skilled staff for initial setup and ongoing policy tuning to manage alert fatigue. |
| Legacy System Support |
Seamless Protection: Its agentless, in-line approach allows it to secure data on legacy systems like mainframes without requiring any system modifications. |
Limited: Struggles with legacy systems due to its agent-based architecture, which is often not feasible for older, critical infrastructure. |
| Data Protection Method |
Active Data Obfuscation: In addition to encryption, it also provides vaulted tokenization and dynamic data masking to replace sensitive data with non-sensitive, secure values in real-time. |
Leading Access Governance: Leads in access governance, automated remediation, and deep data-centric analytics. |
| Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) |
Predictable: A straightforward managed services model with a monthly fee per endpoint makes costs easy to budget. |
High & Opaque: A complex, non-transparent subscription model combined with high costs for skilled staff and professional services leads to a high TCO. |
DataStealth
DataStealth is a true Data Security Platform designed for complex, highly regulated enterprises. Its core philosophy is that the only way to be 100% secure is to protect the data itself, rendering it valueless in the event of a breach. It achieves this through a frictionless, in-flight security model that intercepts data in motion. This "no code, no agent, no disruption" approach is uniquely capable of securing both modern cloud applications and mission-critical legacy systems without altering them
Key Features:
- Active Data Protection: DataStealth goes beyond monitoring by actively neutralizing threats. Its powerful, patented engine offers format-preserving tokenization (which is reversible and quantum-proof) and irreversible dynamic data masking. This makes sensitive data useless even if an attacker gains access to the system.
- Frictionless In-Line Deployment: Deployed via a simple DNS change, DataStealth operates as a proxy, sitting in the line of traffic to protect data without requiring any changes to your applications, databases, or user workflows. This is a massive advantage for securing legacy systems like mainframes, where code changes are generally infeasible.
- Unified Policy Across Hybrid Environments: Apply a single, consistent security policy across all data sources, whether they are on-premise, in multiple clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP), or in SaaS applications.
- Advanced Data Discovery & Classification: DataStealth automatically discovers known and unknown data repositories on your network. It uses advanced techniques like contextual awareness, validity scoring, and cardinality analysis to classify data with virtually zero false positives.
- High-Fidelity Test Data Management (TDM): Securely create production-like test data from production data in a single, in-flight motion. This eliminates the risk of ever copying sensitive production data to less secure non-production environments.
Pricing:
DataStealth operates on a predictable managed services model with a monthly fee per endpoint, making costs easy to budget.
Varonis
Varonis is a powerful platform that excels at data discovery, access governance, and threat detection.
Key Features:
- Automated Discovery and Classification: Varonis is highly regarded for its ability to accurately discover and classify sensitive data with high accuracy (claiming 99%), especially unstructured data across file shares and collaboration platforms.
- Data Access Governance: The platform provides deep visibility into permissions, showing you exactly who has access to what data and helping you enforce a model of least privilege.
- Data-Centric UEBA: This is Varonis's standout feature. It creates a baseline of normal user behavior and alerts on deviations, helping to detect insider threats and compromised accounts.
- Automated Remediation: When Varonis detects a threat or over-permissioned access, its remediation focuses on changing access controls – for example, revoking a user's access to a sensitive folder or moving the data to a more secure location.
What are Varonis’ drawbacks?
When implementing Varonis, enterprises face several practical challenges:
- High Operational Overhead: The platform is notoriously complex and resource-intensive. It requires a dedicated team of skilled staff to manage the initial setup and tuning complexity.
- Significant Alert Fatigue: Varonis is prone to generating a high number of false positives. Without constant management, this noise overwhelms security teams, causing them to miss genuine threats.
- Complex User Interface: The user interface and reporting capabilities are often cited as needing improvement, adding to the steep learning curve and management burden.
- High, Opaque TCO: The total cost of ownership is significant, driven by a non-transparent subscription model, expensive professional services, and the high cost of the internal team needed to manage it.
Pricing:
Varonis uses a subscription model that is typically priced per annum with usage-based tiers. Implementation often requires professional services, and creating custom classifiers for unique data types comes at an additional cost.
Who Should Select DataStealth?
DataStealth is the ideal choice for organizations that prioritize active, data-centric security and require a solution that seamlessly integrates into complex, real-world IT environments without causing disruption.
You should select DataStealth if your organization:
- Relies on legacy systems. If your operations depend on mainframes or other legacy applications where code changes are impossible, DataStealth is one of the only solutions that can provide robust security. Its frictionless, no-code deployment operates at the network layer, protecting data without altering these critical systems.
- Cannot afford business disruption. Security should be an enabler, not a roadblock. DataStealth's in-flight, agentless approach means there are no disruptive agents to deploy, no APIs to integrate, and no changes to user workflows, ensuring zero disruption to your business.
- Needs to innovate securely. If you want to leverage third-party SaaS applications, analytics platforms, or Generative AI without exposing sensitive data, DataStealth allows you to do so by de-identifying the data in motion before it ever reaches those environments.
- Prefers a predictable, managed service model. DataStealth's pricing is straightforward, avoiding the complex, consumption-based billing and high professional services costs associated with self-managed platforms.
Who Should Select Varonis
Varonis can be a fit for organizations whose primary security goal is to gain deep visibility into their data landscape, provided they understand the significant trade-offs.
You should consider Varonis if your organization:
- Prioritizes data access governance and visibility above all else. Varonis excels at discovering data and mapping out complex permission structures.
- Is primarily focused on insider threat detection via UEBA. The platform's core strength is baselining activity and detecting anomalous access patterns.
- Is prepared to dedicate a team to manage its complexity. Varonis is not a "set it and forget it" tool. It requires a dedicated team for the initial setup, ongoing policy tuning, and managing the high volume of alerts to avoid fatigue.
- Accepts the risk of data being exposed if exfiltrated. You must be comfortable with a model that focuses on preventing access, not on neutralizing the data itself in the event of a breach.
Next Steps
Schedule a live, no-obligation demo, and we'll show you how DataStealth can:
- Protect legacy and cloud systems without code changes or disruptive agents.
- Eliminate sensitive data from your environment with format-preserving tokenization.
- Simplify compliance and reduce your audit scope for PCI DSS, HIPAA, and others.
Stop chasing alerts. Start neutralizing threats.
