Axiomatics Data Security

Axiomatics is a privately held company headquartered in Stockholm and Chicago, founded in 2006, that specializes in dynamic, policy-based authorization for applications, databases, and APIs. As digital transformation makes data a central asset, organizations face escalating complexity in protecting information spread across heterogeneous infrastructures such as relational databases, Big Data platforms, and API-exposed backends. Traditional siloed controls and static directory groups are increasingly insufficient because modern access decisions must consider richer context, including location, device type, time, and document classification, while also serving employees, partners, contractors, and customers.

For regulated and highly sensitive data—such as financial transactions and personally identifiable information—organizations often need fine-grained controls that can include redaction prior to access. Axiomatics positions data-centric security as an alternative to siloed protection by using centrally managed business policies and real-time attribute evaluation to deliver adaptive access control. The company is a major contributor to the OASIS XACML 3.0 standard and extends ABAC beyond application authorization into dynamic data masking and access filtering.

Its flagship Axiomatics Policy Server centralizes fine-grained, context-aware policy management. For large data sets, Axiomatics adds a proprietary Axiomatics Reverse Query (ARQ) capability that returns logical criteria for permitted records, avoiding record-by-record “Permit/Deny” evaluation and enabling high-performance enforcement in query-driven systems such as SQL.

Axiomatics Data Access Filter for Multiple Databases operates as a proxy that intercepts SQL, rewrites queries to enforce policy-based filtering, and applies masking/unmasking using native database capabilities so unauthorized data never leaves the database. SmartGuard for Big Data extends the same approach to Hadoop via SQL-on-Hadoop engines using an SQL Transformer and driver-level interceptor agents. Together, these products provide transparent, centrally governed, fine-grained access control across relational and Big Data environments.

• Axiomatics was founded in 2006.
• The company is privately held and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and Chicago, USA.
• Axiomatics contributes to the OASIS XACML standard and supports XACML 3.0 policies in its products.
• Axiomatics Policy Server provides enterprise-wide externalized dynamic authorization and centralized policy management.
• Axiomatics implements a proprietary API called Axiomatics Reverse Query (ARQ) for authorization over large data sets.
• Axiomatics Data Access Filter for Multiple Databases supports MS SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, and Teradata.
• The SQL proxy component does not intercept or modify returned data; enforcement is achieved by manipulating SQL statements.
• Axiomatics licenses its SQL proxy technology from a third party, limiting influence over support for additional database types.
• SmartGuard for Big Data supports Apache Hive and Apache HAWQ, with Impala support in development.
• SmartGuard uses interceptor agents at the database-driver level and an SQL Transformer service rather than a network-level proxy.

• “Each decision to grant access to a particular data must take into account multiple factors like the user’s location and device type, time of the day, as well as the requested document’s classification.”
• “Data-centric security is a much talked-about alternative to the traditional siloed approach towards data protection.”
• “By implementing adaptive policy-based access control based on real-time evaluation of centrally managed business policies, it helps reduce the complexity of data protection infrastructures dramatically.”
• “A single ARQ query will return a logical expression with multiple criteria describing all permitted records.”
• “This proprietary API provides huge performance improvements over standard XACML and can also be naturally applied to other query-based languages like SQL.”
• “Implemented as a database proxy, the product intercepts all connections to the database from any user or application and analyzes every SQL statement for potential violations of applicable security policies.”
• “If the original query would in any way violate a corporate policy… the Axiomatics Data Access Filter MD will rewrite it on the fly to limit the returned data according to the policy.”
• “All dynamic filtering, masking and unmasking functions provided by the solution are based on the native capabilities of the database itself and are achieved solely by manipulating the SQL statements.”
• “An additional access control layer around the Big Data store ensures that existing applications continue to work seamlessly, and access to specific data is enforced according to policies and context.”
• “Both ADAF MD and SmartGuard^TM^ for Big Data can be recommended to any company looking for a working implementation of the data-centric security principle.”