DATA ANALYSIS

How Woolworths Saved Months of Working Time With PII Tools

“We need a data discovery tool that does exactly what it’s supposed to – identify PII fast.”

ABOUT OUR CLIENT

Woolworths
Woolworths is a multinational retail company operating in Africa and Australia. With over 200 active stores as well as an online division, they collect a vast amount of data about their customers and clients.

OVERALL SATISFACTION

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DATA ANALYSIS

How Woolworths Saved Months of Working Time With PII Tools

“We need a data discovery tool that does exactly what it’s supposed to – identify PII fast.”

ABOUT CLIENT

Woolworths
Woolworths is a multinational retail company operating in Africa and Australia. With over 200 active stores as well as an online division, they collect a vast amount of data about their customers and clients.

OVERALL SATISFACTION

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“I was shocked and astonished when PII Tools managed to scan one of the databases that had over 1 TB of data in less than a day.”

– John Duminy, Vulnerability Manager, GRC Cyber Team at Woolworths

THE CHALLENGE

What was the client's need?

John Duminy is a Vulnerability Manager of the Risk and Compliance (GRC) team at Woolworths. An important part of the work that John’s team does is the discovery and protection of sensitive data. This covers compliances such as PCI DSS and the POPI Act, as well as other use cases like security audits.

Initially, Woolworths were using a different DLP software, however, this solution didn’t meet the high standards and requirements that John’s team had. It was too slow, clunky, inaccurate, and couldn’t even dig through all the types of structured and unstructured data.

So, Woolworths initiated an RFP to select a new data discovery tool. John set up a list of requirements, including functionality, accuracy, reliability, cost, and other criteria, based on which they scored each vendor solution.

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OUR SOLUTION

Why Woolworths chose PII Tools

A combination of factors made PII Tools stand out and persuaded John to purchase PII Tools as their new data discovery solution:
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The use of modern AI drastically increases the engine’s accuracy.
The ability to quickly process large databases, big data ready architecture.
The laser focus on accurate discovery and remediation, without irrelevant feature bloat.
Affordable multi-installation pricing.
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The use of modern AI drastically increases the engine’s accuracy.
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The ability to quickly process large databases, big data ready architecture.
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The laser focus on accurate discovery and remediation, without irrelevant feature bloat.
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Affordable multi-installation pricing.
“Very few solutions actually incorporate ML and AI. And that makes a huge difference because it dramatically increases PII Tools’ efficiency.”
John Duminy, Vulnerability Manager, GRC Cyber Team at Woolworths
“Very few solutions actually incorporate ML and AI. And that makes a huge difference because it dramatically increases PII Tools’ efficiency.”
John Duminy, Vulnerability Manager, GRC Cyber Team at Woolworths

Results

Over 30x increased scanning speed averaging at >5MBps

A full PII report on Woolworths’ SQL Server and Oracle databases

168 man-hours – over a month’s worth of work-time in a single year compared to their previous solution

The Next Steps

John already sees the massive improvements in their processes. A database that previously took them 3-4 weeks to scan is handled by PII Tools in less than a day, allowing his team to swiftly move to the remediation and mitigation steps.

Now, Woolworths is exploring the full potential of PII Tools using the REST API for automation. The goal is to scan over 60 TB of structured Oracle data in under 90 days. If everything goes according to his expectations, John plans to expand the tool to other Woolworths subsidiaries.

Would you like to see how fast PII Tools scans your environment?

Schedule a demo

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