IRI DarkShield vs Teleskope Understand

IRI DarkShield finds, classifies, extracts, reports on, and masks sensitive information in structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Searches can use regular expressions, lookup values, path filters, or named-entity recognition with NLP and machine learning. Masking options include deletion, encryption, hashing, pseudonymization, and randomization. Sources range from local or SMB files and cloud object storage to JDBC databases and NoSQL collections. Jobs can run through IRI Workbench, command-line tools, batch scripts, or API-calling programs; Version 6 added REST API support. An exportable HTML5 dashboard shows what sensitive data was found and whether it was masked, while logs can go to SIEM tools such as Splunk Enterprise Security and Datadog. DarkShield runs within customer-controlled infrastructure, on premises or in a customer-controlled cloud. It supports Windows, Linux, and macOS, with at least 4 GB RAM and two cores recommended. Pricing starts at $5,490, and a 30-day trial is listed. Standalone licenses are perpetual and charged per hostname; first-year support is included, with later support available at 20% of the license-fee basis per year.

Teleskope Understand classifies sensitive information across an organization’s data environment. It uses machine learning, large language models, and small language models to identify PII, PCI data, PHI, secrets, tokens, and business-specific sensitive types. Classification can consider document context, access, business profile, and risk appetite. Prism classifies whole documents and can find documents resembling known sensitive examples without predefined rules. Understand maps human, external, personal, and service identities to the sensitive data they can access and ranks those identities by risk. Its event-driven architecture identifies new data and reclassifies changed data in real time; Teleskope says it scans every file rather than sampling. Coverage includes databases, warehouses, cloud storage, SaaS, code repositories, logs, APIs, and collaboration tools. Listed connectors include Slack, Snowflake, SharePoint, OneDrive, OpenAI, Google Drive, GitHub, Databricks, Box, and AWS services. Deployment options are air-gapped, single-tenant SaaS, or Teleskope-managed. Pricing is on request, and the API supports custom integrations for non-standard systems.