News

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Breakwater Solutions, a leader in information governance and data risk management, has completed the acquisition of Clairvoya, developer of an agile, enterprise-class data governance solution that solves complex challenges with data lineage for governance, privacy, and incident response. John Ritter, Chief Executive Officer of Clairvoya, joins Breakwater as Chief Operations Officer. Phil Richards, Chief Technology Officer of Clairvoya, joins as Chief Technology Officer at Breakwater. The acquisition was funded by an additional capital investment to Breakwater by JLL Partners.

Data lineage for unstructured data is a critical but underserved capability in the market due to the complexity of user-created files. User-created files are often poorly controlled by IT policy and found anywhere in the enterprise ecosystem of cloud or on-premises file stores, repositories, laptops, and mobile phones. Also, because unstructured data lacks the structure of files such as databases, business-critical and confidential information is not labeled and needs to be identified and classified.

Data lineage ensures the capture of data flow from its original source through intermediary systems and people, changes, and data transformations. Good data lineage enables governance of the hand-offs between people and systems. Clairvoya manages the lineage of data in motion, answering questions, such as who has accessed the data, what did they do to it, and where did it go. These capabilities compliment Breakwater's StoredIQ for Information Governance platform, designed to manage data at rest, answering questions, such as where is the data now, who has it now, and what is in it.

"Our experience is that many enterprise organizations have little actual knowledge and even fewer controls around the unstructured and semi-structured data or other user-created data," said Breakwater CEO James Schellhase. "The ability to test critical controls around these data flows through the enterprise can drastically minimize risk and exposure and help identify actions by bad actors who might be exposing or manipulating the company's data. Managing data both at rest and in motion is unique in the market, and we believe is currently only available from Breakwater."

Clairvoya's cloud-based data management solution gives customers complete visibility into their data landscape and an unmatched ability to see detailed lineage and content telemetry for total command over their data. Clairvoya's lineage capabilities use patent-pending, future-forward blockchain technology, which has emerged as a core building block for next-generation data and governance frameworks. Clairvoya's lineage allows the system to chain documents together, detect branching, and provide immutable and reliable auditing.

"We founded Clairvoya to solve the most complex data management challenges," said Clairvoya CEO John Ritter. "The combination of our unique, patent-pending blockchain lineage and data management platform combined with Breakwater's strong consulting organization and proven solutions for data at rest provides the market with a complete end-to-end solution for managing data throughout its lifecycle."

Clairvoya's rapid deployment capabilities generate usable information through auto-discovery within hours and can be used today for urgent governance, privacy, and incident response challenges. Some of the use cases addressed include:

• Control Failure Assessment
• Data Subject Access Request (DSAR)
• Data Mapping and Data Flow Analysis
• Data Cataloging

"Data lineage is a critical capability in modern data governance practices and is generally unavailable for unstructured data," said Ryan O'Leary, Research Manager, Privacy and Legal Technology, at IDC. "The addition of Clairvoya to the Breakwater data governance software portfolio will allow Breakwater to address real-world problems that many organizations are struggling to address by adding data in motion to static data inventories."

Clairvoya is immediately available for purchase with subscription pricing through the Breakwater sales team via this contact form and authorized business partners.