IBM Guardium Discover and Classify

Overview

Encryption solutions to secure your data and your business

IBM Guardium® Data Encryption is a family of data encryption and key management software. The modular components are centrally managed through CipherTrust Manager (formerly known as Data Security Manager or DSM), which manages policies, configurations and encryption keys.

Features

Discover, classify, and protect data

Discover repositories and metadata automatically through continuous scanning.

Screenshot of the Discover and Classify automatic scanning discovery dashboard interface

Identify and classify sensitive data—continuously and automatically.

Screenshot of Automatic identification and classification dashboard interface

Use one product to discover all types of data, irrespective of storage types or the location.

Screenshot of the Support all data types and platforms dashboard interface

Use AI and machine learning (ML) to train the system to identify which files contain sensitive data.

Screenshot of the Automated intelligence dashboard interface

Why IBM Guardium Discover and Classify

100%

accuracy in unstructured (flat files) data

See the Tolly Evaluation Report

98.6%

accuracy in structured (database) data

See the Tolly Evaluation Report

Use cases

Turn data visibility into action

Streamlined data subject access request management

IBM Guardium Discover and Classify helps you achieve accurate and efficient DSAR management, offering a range of features to automate and streamline the entire DSAR process while ensuring compliance with global privacy regulations.

Read about DSAR management

Bridging the mainframe security gap

IBM Guardium Discover and Classify boosts the security and compliance of Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) datasets by unlocking the power of contextual AI for mainframe VSAM data discovery and classification.

Learn about VSAM data security

Data protection

Make the most out of your data protection tools by applying the right protection methods to the right data. IBM Guardium Discover and Classify takes the mystery and error out of manual data discovery and categorization through continuous network scanning, providing quantitative data context to best inform your data protection controls.

SIEM and SOAR data context

IBM Guardium Discover and Classify enriches your SIEM and SOAR tools by providing deep business context into data that has been compromised. This data-rich information, including the location and sensitive level of specific data, is critical to help you know what data is exposed or misplaced, plan breach policies and prioritize response activities down to the data asset level.

Attack surface reduction

IBM Guardium Discover and Classify helps to minimize your attack surface by categorizing and eliminating data that has been duplicated, is unused or is no longer critical to protect. It takes inventory of sensitive data throughout the ecosystem and uses tagging capabilities to classify risk assessments and generate context around data assets. By only keeping necessary sensitive data and getting rid of old or useless records and files, you can better address compliance and reporting requirements.

Extending data loss prevention

IBM Guardium Discover and Classify works to reduce the manual effort often required by Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools by extending DLP capabilities. It provides continuous, automatic discovery, analysis and lineage for more accurate policy enforcement and business context around data.

Integrations

IBM Guardium Discover and Classify and OneTrust: Seamless integration with OneTrust transforms your approach to privacy management, automates DSAR fulfillment, and minimizes the manual efforts and errors associated with data mapping and classification.

IBM Guardium Discover and Classify and Microsoft Purview: This integration leverages the strengths of both platforms, combining sensitivity labeling with advanced automation for precise data management, enabling organizations to navigate modern data environments with confidence.

IBM Guardium Discover and Classify and Collibra: IBM Guardium Discover and Classify automatically updates Collibra with the location, sensitivity and business context of unstructured data in near real time by using APIs, so organizations can gain total data visibility across all environments.

Resources

Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026

Transforming mainframe data management

What is data discovery-in-depth?

KuppingerCole Analysts Leadership Compass for Data Security Platforms 2025

Pricing

Simple pricing for structured and unstructured data

Managed virtual servers (MVS) are used for structured data discovery and Terabyte (TB) is used for unstructured data discovery. Pricing varies based on number of data sources and configuration of your environment.

Contact an IBM representative for a detailed discussion on pricing for options that meet your business needs.