By Cathy Polinsky, CTO at DataGrail
Today, DataGrail celebrates its Integration Network becoming the first in the data privacy industry to officially surpass 2,000 purpose-built integrations. These connectors help power our Risk Intelligence, an essential tool for uncovering risk and hidden systems containing personal data.
Recognizing that today’s organizations store data across multiple systems, critical infrastructure, SaaS applications, and more, this historic feat highlights DataGrail’s deeply integrated approach: Our integrations connect seamlessly with today’s most common enterprise apps and platforms.
We’re the only data privacy platform that can uncover unknown SaaS and downstream integrations where personal data may hide. It’s essential for companies to identify these integrations with our Risk Intelligence capability and gain a comprehensive view of all systems containing personal information so they can accurately assess first- and third-party risk.
Data Privacy Requires Integrations With Data Sources
Many businesses aren’t designed for the privacy era, but the right privacy management solution can bring them up to speed.
The privacy era requires companies to be transparent with their customers, and most companies want to be transparent because they know trust builds strong brands. The challenge is they don’t currently have the infrastructure, insight, or manpower to create and act on a comprehensive picture of data privacy across their organization.
In today’s SaaS and PaaS dominated landscape, companies use dozens of third-party and internal cloud-based applications which store personal data. The resulting data sprawl makes it immensely challenging for companies to figure out what they know about their customers and employees. This hinders their ability to adequately safeguard data, manage application systems, and fulfill privacy requests, all of which open companies and their customers to risk.
DataGrail helps companies overcome data privacy challenges and simplify program management by building and maintaining a Live Data Map revealing where personal data is held across their application and system network. DataGrail finds manual audits miss up to 50% of the SaaS applications storing data across company systems, creating a huge knowledge gap and increasing the likelihood of compromised customer data.
Additionally, Gartner recently revealed that 41% of employees used, modified, or created technology “outside of IT’s visibility” in 2022. They expect that percentage to rise to 75% by 2027, creating additional problems for companies trying to safeguard data and manage their application networks.
At the core of DataGrail’s Integration Network is the knowledge that data privacy management starts with uncovering a company’s unknowns. Third-party SaaS apps are becoming integral parts of company infrastructures, and even the most well-intentioned organizations have trouble identifying every application capturing and storing personal information.
From its inception, DataGrail set out to build the industry’s most comprehensive Integration Network to do the heavy lifting for companies to uncover and map all the places personal data lives across an organization. Everything DataGrail does centers on helping people keep their personal data safe by empowering businesses to deliver on consumer privacy rights and earn their trust in the process.
High Volume, Deep Functionality
DataGrail now boasts more than 2,000 quality integrations, including important SaaS players like Salesforce, HubSpot, Shopify, Slack, Amplitude, Braze, Cordial, Drift, Front, FullStory, Greenhouse, Intercom, Klaviyo, Outreach, Rippling, Zendesk, and more. The platform’s commitment to comprehensive data privacy management yields integrations with incredible depth and functionality.
For example, an integration with a modern API like Salesforce has multiple use cases. A company using DataGrail’s Salesforce integration can detect all downstream applications that may be hidden within its ecosystem, and authenticate and execute customer requests to access or delete their data.
Legacy brands, meanwhile, may have more complex and farther-reaching systems housing personal data. For example, Overstock may use FedEx to ship customers products from a large e-commerce brand. If a customer submits a data deletion request, DataGrail works with Overstock to execute an end-to-end removal of that customer’s personal data. In this example, the process includes finding the e-commerce’s connections to FedEx and ensuring the deletion of that instance of the customer’s personal data.
Better Data Privacy Management Boosts Your Business
Across tech stacks comprising homegrown applications and third-party SaaS, repeat instances of personal data spread like wildfire leaving security and privacy leaders feeling helpless. In the age of CCPA and GDPR, lacking accurate data management and leaving personal data vulnerable is a nonstarter.
A better understanding of the SaaS used across an organization can help companies reduce their overall business risk. With a complete picture of where personal data lives in an organization, it’s easy for data subjects to exercise their privacy rights by accessing, managing, or removing the information a company holds on them.
Data privacy is growing in importance for the average consumer, with data subject request (DSR) volume increasing 72% YoY from 2021 to 2022 according to our Privacy Trends 2023 report. Due to a flurry of privacy events and media coverage, like the congressional hearing of TikTok CEO Shou Chew in March 2023, people are rightfully questioning how companies use and manage their data.
At DataGrail, Risk Intelligence isn’t a flashy sales tool or simple add-on to the user interface: It’s core to what we do. Uncovering shadow SaaS and vulnerable data with our Integration Network makes it possible for every company — regardless of existing privacy infrastructure — to implement an effective data privacy program and reduce business risk.
Implementing this approach includes automated privacy request fulfillment processes and can help companies earn loyalty from customers who appreciate transparency and an authentic commitment to privacy. Making it easy for customers to manage or remove their personal data helps them feel confident in placing more trust in a business, and boosts retention and brand evangelism.
To start building your company’s data privacy program, book some time with our team. We’ll get you up and running.