SAN FRANCISCO – September 9, 2025 – Relyance AI, an AI-native data security platform, today announced the Data Defense Engineer, an AI-native feature designed to monitor and protect thousands of data journeys and autonomously enforces policies at machine speed.
As organizations deploy AI systems, data becomes executable intelligence rather than passive information. Relyance AI’s Data Defense Engineer is intended to shift from static data scanning to real-time data journey mapping, providing enterprises with superintelligence that continuously tracks how sensitive data flows through code, cloud infrastructure, and AI systems—all available through a conversational query for security teams to ask questions in plain English and get immediate answers.
“We’re witnessing a tectonic shift where data isn’t just stored information anymore—it’s executable intelligence that directly influences what software does,” said Abhi Sharma, CEO and co-founder of Relyance AI. “When data becomes the context that shapes AI behavior, a breach isn’t just about stolen records; it’s about corrupted intelligence that can manipulate every decision your systems make. Traditional security tools were built for a world where data stayed put. With Data Defense Engineer, we’ve rebuilt data security from first principles for the age of superintelligence.”
Recent high-profile breaches have targeted sensitive data that flows through an organization’s tech stack including UnitedHealthcare’s $3.09 billion total cost from a single ransomware attack and National Public Data’s 2.9 billion records exposed, leading to company bankruptcy. These breaches clearly underscore the high cost of critical gaps in current approaches:
“The scale of unknown data exposure is staggering,” noted Chris Bender, CISO at ClickUp, an early Relyance AI customer. “AI is creating and moving data faster than any team can track. Only AI-native tools like Relyance AI can keep up with the discovery and enforcement loop.”
CISOs and CIOs today face an impossible choice: enable rapid AI innovation or maintain security and compliance. Traditional tools force this trade-off because they can’t keep up with the speed and complexity of modern data flows.
Relyance AI’s Data Defense Engineer eliminates that trade-off by allowing customers to deploy AI confidently with complete visibility and control over how their data is used which also accelerates innovation by providing guardrails that work at the speed of code.
Relyance AI’s Data Defense Engineer significantly enhances the Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) category by addressing and transforming critical areas such as:
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Security and explainability as core design principles
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Real-Time Data Flow Visibility: Complete end-to-end mapping of how sensitive data moves across code, cloud, SaaS, and AI models
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Natural Language Intelligence: Security teams can ask questions and receive immediate answers such as “show me all customer data flowing to third-party AI services” or “which datasets are training our recommendation model?”
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Unified Governance: Consolidates security, privacy, and AI compliance requirements into one platform, breaking down silos across teams
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Innovation requires autonomous protection
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Autonomous Policy Enforcement: Preventive controls automatically block sensitive or non-compliant data use before violations occur
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Context-Aware Automation: Learns how data is actually used, predicts risks, and enforces policies without slowing innovation
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Data integrity defines intelligence integrity
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Real-Time Monitoring: Tracks not only data movement but also transformations—every API call, model inference, and processing step
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Continuous Integrity Assurance: Protects against data poisoning attacks by ensuring corrupted datasets cannot undermine system intelligence
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Unified Governance: Maintains integrity by applying consistent controls across security, compliance, and privacy dimensions
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Relyance AI’s flagship platform, Data Journeys, is already deployed by major enterprises including Coinbase, Notion, Canva, ClickUp, Bolt, and Yelp.
“With Relyance AI, we established enhanced visibility of data processing activities, seeing an impressive increase of 1,660% within three weeks of deployment,” said Deborah Usry, Product Counsel at NextRoll.
“Within 15 minutes of connecting to Relyance AI, we had total visibility of our vendors and services. That speed and simplicity changed everything,” added Heather Allen, Privacy Officer at CHG Healthcare.
