New IBM Guardium Tool Detects Sensitive Data for GDPR Compliance

IBM is set to announce the release of its new Guardium Analyzer security tool on June 5 to help organizations identify and protect sensitive personal information that might be subject to the European Union's (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR is all about keeping personal end-user information private, but not all organizations always know where sensitive information is stored within their organization. The new Guardium Analyzer tool is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering designed to identify and classify personal information that an organization is storing within databases. "IBM Security Guardium Analyzer is a new stand-alone service that is built specifically for GDPR compliance, and is the first software-as-a-service offering in the Guardium data security and protection portfolio," Leslie Wiggins, Product Manager at IBM Data Security, told eWEEK. "While it is a completely new product, we applied best practices from our existing data security portfolio during the development of the service." GDPR enforcement officially began on May 25, though an IBM studyreleased on May 6 reported that the majority of organizations would not be compliant with the deadline. Wiggins commented that despite the deadline, many companies are still fairly early on in their journey to GDPR compliance.  "Finding and classifying sensitive the data that falls under GDPR jurisdiction is one of the early steps needed on the roadmap to GDPR compliance, yet this is also one of the biggest challenge areas for companies," Wiggins said. "Having a tool that allows companies to efficiently find and keep track of this data on an ongoing basis not only meets a big demand that we see in the market currently but will also be an important part of compliance efforts in the long term."