PK Protect vs Teleskope Understand
PK Protect
pkware.com
Teleskope Understand
teleskope.aiSide by side
| Figure | PK Protect | Teleskope Understand |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Sensitive Data Discovery Software | 7.3 (#9) | 7.5 (#8) |
| Company history | PKWARE's company page says Phil Katz founded the company in Milwaukee in 1986. | The company history page dates its early development to 2022 and says Teleskope launched general availability in January 2025. |
| Compliance | PKWARE lists out-of-the-box coverage for PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, CMMC, GLBA, SOX, FISMA, FINRA, CJIS, and ITAR. | Teleskope says its audit trail and automated evidence generation support SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR, CCPA, and EU AI Act reporting requirements. |
| Founded | 1986 | 2022 |
| Headquarters | PKWARE lists its U.S. headquarters at 201 E. Pittsburgh Ave., Suite 400, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53204. | New York, New York, United States |
| Integrations | PKWARE says its platform supports over 250 on-premises and cloud databases, cloud storage, big data repositories, and productivity applications. | The integrations page lists sources including Snowflake, SharePoint and OneDrive, OpenAI, Notion, Google Drive, GitHub, Databricks, Box, AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure services. |
| Intended users | PKWARE positions PK Protect for organizations seeking enterprise-wide data security and compliance, and says it is used by 21 of the 25 largest U.S. banks. | Teleskope describes its mission as equipping organizations to detect risks, automate protection, and scale with confidence, and says it serves security teams. |
| Purpose | PK Protect helps enterprises discover and protect sensitive data across endpoints, servers, cloud, databases, data lakes, and mainframes. | Understand automatically classifies sensitive information using machine learning, including PII, PCI, PHI, secrets, and business-specific data types. |
| Support | PKWARE directs customers to its technical support and online support portal. | Teleskope lists [email protected] for customer support and says it aims to respond to contact requests within 24 hours or less. |
Plans
In their own words
PK Protect
PK Protect is PKWARE’s enterprise data security platform for discovering and protecting sensitive information across endpoints, servers, cloud environments, databases, data lakes, and mainframes. Its policy-driven actions include encryption, redaction, masking, moving, deleting, and quarantining data. PKWARE describes three products: Endpoint Manager, Data Store Manager, and PK Protect for z/OS. Endpoint Manager covers desktops, laptops, servers, file shares, and Microsoft 365; Data Store Manager works across structured and unstructured data, including databases, cloud repositories, applications, and ERPs. The z/OS product discovers applications and critical data elements, helps prevent leakage, and supports SBOM creation for audits. Integration with Microsoft Purview can apply sensitivity labels centrally and extend protection to file types Purview cannot label. PKWARE lists compliance coverage for frameworks including PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, and ITAR. The platform supports hybrid deployment, multi-cloud coverage, and external KMS. Pricing is available on request. PKWARE says it was founded in Milwaukee in 1986.
Teleskope Understand
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.