How Exterro & Partners Target Need for Unified Governance

Data governance is no longer a task just for IT or even security teams. Organizations today require a full-business approach to data, including everyone from legal and operations to the CISO and others. 

We spoke with Exterro’s Senior Director of Channel Sales, Bruce Holbert, and Managing Director of GTM Strategy & Operations – Privacy & Data Governance Solutions, Rebecca Perry, about how they enable channel partners to leverage their clients’ needs to foster deeper relationships.

Why more enterprises are seeking ways to break down siloes and better manage their data

As we’ve covered throughout this year, companies of all sizes are more concerned about their data than maybe ever before. Now, as the regulatory landscape continues to shift worldwide and the sheer volume of data grows, businesses are finding it harder to work in siloes than to bring together leaders across the company.

For example, security-focused data needs, including the classification and handling of PII and various detection and response capabilities, are traditionally the responsibility of the CISO or CIO. Legal teams likely set policies around data retention, meanwhile, but the two functions might not communicate effectively, even as they work with the same data.

“What we’re seeing is these stakeholders really coming together to solve this greater challenge. And the challenge that they’re struggling with is getting visibility into their data landscape,” said Perry.

“The governance challenge starts with getting your arms around your data and building those data maps, data inventory, so that they can even understand what problems they’re trying to tackle and quantify it,” she continued.

Exterro’s platform approach to solving that challenge

The Exterro Data Risk Management Platform offers a comprehensive suite of solutions that address the full spectrum of compliance requirements. This includes discovery, digital forensics, law enforcement forensics, and components of data privacy and governance such as mapping, retention, and consent management, among others.

Earlier this year, the company added mobile data capabilities and later in the summer announced new agentic AI-based tools within the platform.

“Having that unified platform allows us to address the life cycle of risk for that data as it sits anywhere in the organization,” Holbert said. 

Perry and Holbert both emphasize the need for visibility into the data itself before practices can be implemented across the organization. From there, Perry says, the goal becomes ensuring organizations can make defensible decisions about that data as they work to reduce costs and increase security.

“If organizations can look at that information governance reference model and we can provide technology that helps them meet some of those obligations and mitigate risks along the way, reduce those costs and put them in that defensible position, then that’s a success,” Perry said.

“What we’re really trying to do with Optics360 is bring the visibility and enable governance across these different domains,” she continued.

The partner angle: how to go beyond traditional CISO relationships and drive business value

Exterro works with a variety of channel partners, from traditional resellers to more governance-focused consultancies, to bring its platform into the market. 

Increasingly, Holbert says, the company is helping its partners approach conversations with customers they had not previously addressed.

“They’re looking at mind share with their customers, looking at getting as much percentage of wallet as possible. And then, how do they become sticky to the CISO, or that new conversation with general counsel, where they may have never had that conversation for a traditional reseller,” Holbert said. 

To Perry, the sheer volume of data that most enterprises now maintain presents an opportunity to solve a pressing business problem.

“We’re dealing with some organizations right now that have 100 petabytes of data within a shared environment,” Perry said. “And what scares them is they don’t know what they don’t know, but they know that there’s stuff in there that they should care about or that they need to remediate. And so I think, you know, our technology, working with partners that can help guide those types of processes, can be invaluable in those cases.”

“If we can help those partners have a more legal conversation with our technology in the mix, that’s a win. And they get stickier, they expand the value that they bring to those customers,” Holbert continued.

Together, Exterro and its partners are helping enterprises not only mitigate risk but unlock the strategic potential of unified data governance.