OneTrust CEO Kabir Barday, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, CIPT, FIP, and Integris Software Founder and CEO Kristina Bergman were having similar conversations with their customers at the same time. The tech vendors' customers wanted them to expand their offerings with what the other was providing.
Bergman said Integris users wanted more integration with privacy, security and data governance tools. Meanwhile, Barday and OneTrust customers wanted the tech vendor to partner with data discovery and classification services. The end results of those conversations recently concluded with OneTrust's acquisition of Integris.
"It made sense to have that conversation because the market wants what the market wants, and if that’s what customers are asking for, then it makes a lot of sense to combine forces and a provide a one-stop shop for everything that customers need to be compliant with all these laws," Bergman said.
While the ink may have just dried on the deal, the two tech vendors had already begun the process of merging their services. Barday said the Integris data discovery technology has already been implemented into OneTrust's existing platform, and those changes have already been rolled out to existing Fortune 500 clients. Integris has also helped advance and mature OneTrust's own data discovery solution.
"What’s nice about the Integris architecture is that the data discovery technology is more of a back-end technical piece that can go use the (artificial intelligence) to scan, crawl and classify and then speed all that information to a lot of the (user interfaces) that OneTrust has," Barday said. "[Our] teams have been working together over the last 90 days to already build those UI screens in OneTrust on our existing platform. Customers have a single product and platform and won’t even see the difference between any of the technologies."
Barday and Bergman both believe the deal will benefit privacy professionals. Barday said the acquisition represents the first time a full privacy management platform and a complete data discovery solution have been combined, which will help simplify workload. He added the privacy tech market has a "fragmented spectrum of solutions," which forces privacy professionals to take expensive and complicated measures "to cobble together multiple tools and integrate tools that weren’t designed to be integrated together."
Bergman feels the privacy space always boils down to data, and organizations need to truly understand the data to properly protect it. By adding Integris' technology to OneTrust's platform, Bergman said privacy professionals will have the evidence they need to get their organizations to buy into their privacy programs.
"I think having these two technologies brought together is going to add a lot of value and give a lot of power to privacy professionals to be real thought leaders and influencers in their organizations," Bergman said. "It’s not going to be just policies and laws. They are going to have a real stick when they can point to the actual data itself and be able to go to other groups within the organization and point to evidence of where the company can improve and be more compliant. It’s going to give them a bigger seat at the table."
Barday said the acquisition was finalized at just the right time, because over the past two to three years, companies were not ready to deploy data discovery technology, as they instead focused on the more immediate priorities of the EU General Data Protection Regulation and California Consumer Privacy Act.
Now, those organizations have begun to move onto phase two or three of their compliance programs, and they are now ready to incorporate automated data discovery into their practices.
The technologies may have been integrated, but the moving parts are far from settled. Bergman will oversee the operational transition between the two vendors, which is expected to continue over the months ahead. Barday said all the assets Integris brings to OneTrust was one of the reasons why he feels the deal needed to be done.
"There’s so much good talent in the privacy technology industry," Barday said. "There are so many great technologies and teams and people, and when you have an opportunity to combine with a team that has the type of expertise and knowledge that Kristina’s team has, and the level of sophistication in their technology and the depth of their AI and machine learning capabilities and their experience with major Fortune 500 deployment, those are the types of opportunities you’d be crazy not take advantage of."
Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash
