When a legendary technology executive like Frank Slootman makes a move, the entire industry takes notice. His recent decision to join Cyera's board of directors isn't just a win for one company—it's a powerful signal that data-centric security has reached a critical inflection point within the broader cyber market.
Slootman's track record speaks for itself. As the driving force behind ServiceNow, Data Domain, and Snowflake, he has consistently identified and scaled technologies that fundamentally transform how enterprises operate. His joining Cyera further validates what we at Virtru have known for years: protecting data itself, not just the perimeters around it, is the future of cybersecurity.
The convergence of AI, cloud migration, and increasingly sophisticated threats has created a perfect storm that makes data-centric security not just important but essential. Slootman's move to Cyera is the latest indicator that the market is maturing rapidly, with mainstream enterprise adoption following close behind.
This rising tide benefits everyone in our category. Indeed, as the market for data-centric security solutions grows, so does awareness of the need for a truly comprehensive approach to data protection – one that encompasses both discovery, classification, and tagging of sensitive data – and also granular policy and access control on data that is inevitably shared with others in the name of collaboration and value creation.
While we celebrate this collective momentum, it's worth highlighting the distinct approaches within our category. Cyera has established itself as a leader in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM), leveraging AI-native technology to answer the critical question: "Where is my sensitive data located?" Their platform helps organizations discover and classify sensitive data at scale, preventing accidental exposure or theft.
At Virtru, we approach data-centric security from a different but complementary angle. Our focus has always been on giving customers agency over their sensitive data as it moves and is shared. We enable data to flow freely outside organizational boundaries—through email, files, applications, analytics, and increasingly, AI workflows—without sacrificing security, privacy, or control.
In many ways, our approaches represent two sides of the same coin:
The real power comes when these approaches work in concert. Once you've identified your sensitive data through solutions like Cyera's, you need mechanisms to apply granular policy, access control, and encryption to that data as it moves beyond your organization's boundaries. That's where Virtru's technology shines.
Imagine discovering that you have sensitive healthcare data scattered across various repositories using Cyera. The next logical step is ensuring that when that data needs to be shared—with partners, patients, or research institutions—it remains protected and controlled. Virtru's encryption and policy enforcement follows the data itself, ensuring that even as it creates collaborative value beyond your perimeter, you maintain control over who can access it and what they can do with it.
As Slootman noted, "The specter of AI has massively upped the ante." AI is not just creating more data—it's fundamentally changing how we use, share, and protect information. Organizations need to securely feed data into AI systems while maintaining control over both the inputs and outputs.
This AI revolution makes the complementary nature of discovery and protection even more critical. You need to know where your sensitive data is before it enters AI systems, and you need persistent protection as that data flows through increasingly complex workflows.
The tide is indeed rising for data-centric security. And with visionaries like Slootman now publicly betting on its future, that tide shows no signs of receding.