Database and Big Data Security

Databases remain the dominant technology for storing business-critical digital information, so protecting integrity, confidentiality, and availability is essential. Database security spans controls for the data itself, the underlying compute and network infrastructure, and applications accessing the data. Since the prior edition of the Leadership Compass, digital transformation has increased both data variety and infrastructure complexity, pushing most organizations to use multiple data stores (relational databases, NoSQL, Big Data platforms, file stores) for structured and unstructured data. Regulations such as GDPR and CCPA treat all these stores as equally sensitive, motivating an expanded scope that includes governance and protection for NoSQL and Big Data in addition to relational systems.

Key database risks include data corruption or loss (error or sabotage), excessive privilege abuse, account compromise via malware/phishing, software vulnerabilities or misconfiguration, and denial-of-service disruption. The market is fragmented: many vendors cover only one layer such as encryption, access control, or monitoring, while only the largest can invest in broad coverage. Buyers are advised not to pick solely by “overall leader” status, but to balance integrated suites versus best-of-breed tools and prioritize integration with SIEM/SOC, IAM, and governance platforms to achieve consolidated monitoring, analytics, and compliance across environments. Hybrid delivery is presented as effectively unavoidable because many protections must run close to data sources while analytics/audit components may be SaaS.

Evaluation emphasizes vulnerability assessment, discovery/classification, data-centric security (encryption/masking), monitoring/analytics, threat prevention, access management, audit/compliance, plus performance/scalability. In leadership results, IBM and Oracle are the only Overall Leaders, with Oracle elevated to top overall due to Autonomous Database innovations. Challengers include Imperva, Thales (post-Gemalto acquisition), and specialized newcomers such as comforte AG, Delphix, and SecuPI, reflecting a mature market with no Followers.

• GDPR and CCPA make no distinction between relational databases, data lakes, or file stores for sensitivity of data.
• Only IBM and Oracle reached the Leaders segment in the Overall Leadership rating.
• Oracle was recognized as the overall leader in Database and Big Data security in this edition.
• IBM Security Guardium added support for unstructured data protection, extending beyond databases and Big Data platforms.
• Thales completed the acquisition of Gemalto in early 2019.
• Imperva was acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo in 2019.
• Delphix serves over 300 global enterprise customers, including 30% of Fortune 100 companies.
• Axiomatics is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and was founded in 2006.
• comforte AG traces its roots back to 1998 and is based in Wiesbaden, Germany.
• Oracle Autonomous Database automates provisioning, management, tuning, and upgrades without downtime.

• “Customers are encouraged to look at database and big data security products not as isolated point solutions, but as a part of an overall corporate security strategy based on a multi-layered architecture and unified by centralized management, governance and analytics.”
• “In other words, when it comes to data protection, you can safely assume that a hybrid delivery model is the only viable option.”
• “Classification alone does not provide any protection, it serves as a crucial first step in defining proper security policies for different data depending on their criticality and compliance requirements.”
• “A thorough selection includes a subsequent detailed analysis and a Proof of Concept of the pilot phase, based on the specific criteria of the customer.”
• “We strongly recommend looking at all leadership categories, the individual analysis of the vendors, and their products to get a comprehensive understanding of the players in this market.”
• “Innovation is not limited to delivering a constant flow of new releases, but focuses on a customer-oriented upgrade approach, ensuring compatibility with earlier versions especially at the API level.”
• “Security vulnerabilities or configuration problems in the database software, which may lead to data loss or availability issues;”
• “Despite our effort to cover most aspects of database and big data security in this Leadership Compass, we are not covering the following products:”
• “Solutions offering support for multiple database types as well as extending their coverage to other types of digital information are expected to receive more favorable ratings…”
• “For certain critical applications, passive monitoring may still be the only viable option.”