Complete Data Visibility with Proofpoint DSPM Across Every Cloud

The Challenge

Automate Data Discovery and Prioritize Risk 

For Informatica, customer trust is the foundation of its business. As a global leader in enterprise cloud data management, the company helps more than 5,000 customers across 85 countries to integrate, govern, and protect their most valuable asset—data. Delivering on that promise requires maintaining strong security controls across a highly complex technology environment. The company needed to secure data across more than 70 products running in multiple cloud environments that spans AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and on-premises infrastructure. 

As Informatica's cloud footprint continued to grow, so did the challenge of protecting sensitive data. The rapid expansion of cloud services, AI initiatives, and continuous development pipelines created more data, more repositories, and more potential risk. The security team needed a way to continuously discover where sensitive data resided, identify who had access to it, detect shadow and abandoned data, and understand which assets posed the greatest business risk. At the same time, they needed to support stringent compliance requirements—including FedRAMP, ISO, and SOC—and verify that customer data was properly removed when contractual obligations required deletion. Manual data classification and periodic reviews were no longer enough to keep pace with the scale and speed of the environment. 

Recognizing the need for a modern approach to data security posture management, Informatica evaluated seven to eight DSPM solutions through an extensive proof-of-concept process. Proofpoint DSPM stood out because it delivered the comprehensive visibility, broad platform support, and operational simplicity the organization was looking for. The solution provided a single view of sensitive data across cloud and on-premises environments, allowing security teams to continuously monitor assets, understand data exposure, identify high-value targets, and quickly determine who had access to critical information.

The Solution

Improved Security Efficiency Across Cloud and On-Premises Environments 

Proofpoint DSPM provided Informatica with a centralized view of sensitive data across its entire hybrid environment through an agentless architecture that simplified deployment and scaled across cloud and on-premises infrastructure.  

The platform continuously identifies sensitive data, monitors access, uncovers shadow data, and prioritizes risk by showing both the exposure of critical assets and their potential financial impact. These risk insights help security teams communicate the urgency of remediation efforts to both product teams and executive leadership.  

Informatica also benefited from Proofpoint's patented one-pass scanner, which significantly reduced false positives and minimized the operational burden on the security team. Another key capability was the ability to scan restored database backups rather than production databases, allowing security teams to perform comprehensive scans without creating change requests, disrupting production workloads, or requiring repeated coordination with application owners.  

The platform also provides an additional validation step to confirm customer data has been removed when required, helping support compliance and contractual obligations. 

"If any vendor can solve the problem of Informatica, then they can solve it for any company. I'm very happy to say Proofpoint DSPM solved all the problems," said Rankin Valero, Principal Information Security & Compliance Engineer. 

The Results

Modernize Data Security for the AI Era 

By implementing Proofpoint DSPM, Informatica significantly improved both its security posture and operational efficiency. The reduction in false positives enabled the security team to spend far less time investigating alerts and coordinating with product teams, resulting in an estimated 60% reduction in security team effort. “One of the best features of Proofpoint DSPM is OnePass, patented scanner. The number of false positives with Proofpoint DSPM is significantly less, which helped us save 60% of the time interacting with the product teams,” said Valleru. 

Highlight Stats: 

• 50% reduction in operational effort for database scanning 

• 60% reduction in false positives enabled significant operational efficiency gains 

• 70+ products secured in complex multi-cloud environments 

The database restore scanning capability further streamlined operations by eliminating much of the administrative overhead associated with production scanning, reducing operational effort by approximately 50% while allowing security teams to work independently without disrupting engineering teams.  

With a single, comprehensive view of sensitive data across cloud and on-premises environments, Informatica can more effectively identify high-risk assets, prioritize remediation efforts, and maintain compliance across its global infrastructure.  

Beyond the technology itself, Informatica said Proofpoint's support organization is an extension of its own team providing responsive technical support and collaboration on new feature requests.