Tool Overview:
skyflow

About Skyflow

Skyflow is a data privacy vault platform that isolates, protects, and governs sensitive customer data like personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), and payment card data. The platform functions as a protective layer that sits between applications and sensitive data, transforming regulated information into non-exploitable tokens that can be safely used throughout an organization's systems.

What does Skyflow do?

The platform employs a vault architecture that stores sensitive data separately from application infrastructure. When data enters the vault, it is tokenized - replaced with randomly generated references that have no mathematical relationship to the original values. These tokens can be safely stored in databases, logging systems, and analytics platforms since they carry no sensitive information. The actual protected data remains isolated in the vault, where access is controlled through governance policies.

Skyflow includes pre-built integrations with payment processors, identity verification services, and other third-party providers through its Connections feature. This allows organizations to use sensitive data with external services without exposing the actual data to their own infrastructure. The platform also provides client-side SDKs that enable direct collection of sensitive data from web and mobile applications into the vault, keeping the data out of application servers entirely.

What makes Skyflow different?

A key differentiator is Skyflow's governance engine, which provides fine-grained access control and comprehensive audit logging. The platform uses a Policy Based Access Control model that combines the manageability of role-based systems with the granularity of attribute-based controls. This allows organizations to enforce column-level and row-level permissions as well as SQL-based filtering rules. The governance engine also supports different data redaction formats, enabling scenarios where certain users see only partial data like the last four digits of a social security number.

The platform takes a 'zero trust' approach where no users or systems have default access to sensitive data. All access must be explicitly granted through policies. These policies control who can access what data, when they can access it, and in what format they receive it. The platform maintains detailed audit logs of all data access attempts, enabling organizations to monitor and verify proper data usage.

Use cases and industries

Skyflow serves multiple industries including financial services, healthcare, retail, and travel. For financial services, it provides PCI DSS compliance capabilities through secure card data storage and tokenization. In healthcare, it helps organizations achieve HIPAA compliance by isolating and protecting patient data. The platform also supports data residency requirements by allowing organizations to deploy vaults in specific geographic regions to comply with local data protection regulations.

A common use case is securing customer PII in customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Rather than storing sensitive data directly in the CRM, organizations can store tokenized references while keeping the actual data protected in a Skyflow vault. The platform also integrates with data warehouses like Snowflake, enabling privacy-preserving analytics by allowing controlled access to de-identified data for analysis while maintaining security of the original information.

Recent product developments include a Native App for Snowflake that allows transformation of sensitive data during query operations, and transient field capabilities that enable temporary secure storage of data like CVV codes that cannot be permanently retained. The platform is certified for various compliance frameworks including PCI DSS, SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR.