Vishal Gauri, Chief Executive Officer, Seclore

Vishal Gauri is a visionary leader at the intersection of technology, security, and entrepreneurship. An IIT Delhi alumnus, he brings over two decades of global experience in driving innovation, growth, and customer success. He is passionate about building future-ready solutions that safeguard data and accelerate business transformation. Beyond technology, he nurtures entrepreneurial excellence, shaping India’s startup landscape while championing innovation, resilience, and sustainable growth worldwide.

In a recent interaction with M R Yuvatha, Senior Correspondent at siliconindia, Vishal Gauri, shared his insights on ‘The Invisible Risk of Untracked Data Movement in Enterprise Security’.

Untracked data movement is an increasing threat to enterprise security and growth. Shadow APIs and unstructured data residing outside organizational control increase the risk of breaches, compliance violations, and flawed decision-making. This hidden sprawl adds IT complexity, drives up costs, and slows innovation. Enterprises must discover, classify, and govern all data and APIs to change blind spots into stronger security, better insights, and sustainable growth.

Data Centric Security for Modern Enterprises

Detecting and controlling shadow data, such as untracked APIs and forgotten system integrations, requires organizations to begin with visibility. Many enterprises are unaware of the extent of shadow data within their environments. Hidden APIs and forgotten integrations can create significant security risks. Effective management starts with continuous discovery scanning to identify these unseen data flows, classify their sensitivity, and map their usage. Once understood, organizations can enforce protection measures, ensuring data security while maintaining operational continuity.

Untracked data movement is an invisible yet growing threat to enterprise security and growth. The rise of generative AI has significantly increased the volume of data, especially unstructured data residing in emails and files, as both creation and consumption increasingly occur through AI. Understanding where and how data exists has become more critical than ever.

To address this, organizations rely on continuous discovery. DSPM (Data Security Posture Management) tools, combined with modern discovery solutions, scan SaaS, cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. Their use is commonly based on AI or LLM to interpret the content, context, and intended purpose of data to be classified as sensitive, top secret, or open. In combination with real-time tracking and security, the practice minimizes blind-spots and unauthorized data traffic. In organizations like Seclore, data is tracked wherever it goes, emphasizing the vital role of discovery and context in securing enterprise information.

Legacy systems and forgotten APIs are often the soft underbelly of enterprise security. They must either be retired or secured under modern identity and access controls.

Tracking Unseen Data to Prevent Breaches

Addressing security gaps often begins with legacy systems, which are often the most vulnerable points in any enterprise due to outdated identity and access management controls. Temporary data sets, such as exports from SaaS or other enterprise systems used for reporting or operational tasks, further increase exposure.

To mitigate these risks, organizations implement systematic audits, cataloging all systems and APIs, including those outside formal governance, and classifying them based on sensitivity. Security wrappers or frameworks are applied, and unused APIs are retired. Forgotten data created when information is pulled for specific tasks but never removed is managed through discovery tools and protection at the source. By securing data at its origin, enterprises maintain full control, ensure compliance, and bring legacy systems under modern security standards.

Enterprises often perceive governance as an overhead, with teams focused on completing tasks rather than navigating frameworks that may slow progress. The ideal approach is to embed governance directly into the data. When policies travel with data across files, workflows, and daily user activities, compliance is maintained seamlessly. This provides clear visibility into how sensitive information is accessed and moved both within and outside the organization. By integrating governance into the data itself, enterprises can ensure both operational efficiency and robust data security.

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Governing APIs and Ensuring Transparent Data Flows

APIs serve as the backbone for data movement within enterprises, controlling critical operations across large organizations. Effective management starts with maintaining a complete inventory, cataloging APIs, and ensuring continuous discovery and updates. Each API should follow a zero-trust or least-privilege model with robust authentication, authorization, and policy enforcement. Continuous monitoring for wunusual patterns, combined with governance checks such as ensuring no API goes live without a full compliance review in CI/CD pipelines is crucial. Like data governance, API governance must be an ongoing, actively monitored process.

Organizations seeking auditable data flows that comply with regulations, build stakeholder trust, and support growth without disrupting operations must prioritize transparency. Transparency goes beyond compliance it empowers teams to work effectively and drives business growth. When stakeholders see that data flows are secure, it fosters trust and enables collaboration both internally and externally.

A critical factor is the ability to track information throughout its lifecycle, ensuring proper management, preventing unauthorized sharing, and monitoring who accesses it, where it originates, and where it is sent, even across countries. For instance, when sharing sensitive data with vendors, robust controls are essential. Organizations like Seclore exemplify these best practices.

Looking Ahead

Enterprise security is increasingly shifting away from networks, infrastructure, and cloud, with greater emphasis on how data is handled. It is nearly impossible to secure every surface or infrastructure point. The real vulnerabilities lie in the data flows themselves whether through temporary storage, permanent storage in hybrid environments, or APIs through which data is transacted. Developing a data-centric approach is essential, implying security must reside with the data, and policies must travel with it. This approach ensures that governance and security are consistently maintained.