Is Cyera a replacement for DeepInspect, or the other way around?

Neither replaces the other. They operate at different points in the stack. Cyera's discovery and classification work tells you where sensitive data and identities live across your cloud environment, which is useful groundwork for writing good policy. DeepInspect enforces that policy at the moment an AI request happens, on the actual HTTP call between an authenticated user or agent and an LLM. A security team can use Cyera's findings, this database has PHI, this service account has broad access, to shape the policies DeepInspect enforces at the request layer. Cyera's architecture stops at data discovery and identity inventory: it doesn't intercept the live call to an LLM API. DeepInspect's architecture stops at the request boundary: it inventories nothing about your cloud environment beyond what arrives inside a given prompt. Most regulated organizations end up running both, with Cyera's findings feeding the policies DeepInspect enforces in real time.

Does Cyera enforce policy on live LLM API calls?

Cyera's architecture is built for discovery and posture management, not for sitting inline on the request path between a caller and an LLM. Its scans connect to cloud accounts and SaaS applications through API integrations that run on their own schedule, then surface findings: where sensitive data sits, which identities can reach it, what's misconfigured. That's valuable input for a governance program, and it's a different architectural pattern from evaluating and acting on one specific HTTP request as it happens. If the requirement is a pass, redact, or block decision made before a prompt reaches a model, that decision has to happen at the request layer itself, which is the job DeepInspect's proxy architecture is built around. Cyera's acquisition of Oasis Security added identity and entitlement depth to its inventory, not a live enforcement point on outbound AI traffic.

Does DeepInspect discover where my sensitive data lives across my cloud environment?

No. DeepInspect isn't a discovery or posture-management tool, and it doesn't scan S3 buckets, data warehouses, or SaaS tenants looking for unclassified data at rest. Its job starts when a request reaches the proxy: it classifies the content of that specific prompt or response, evaluates the identity and policy context attached to it, and makes a decision. If your organization doesn't yet know where sensitive data lives across its cloud footprint, that's a Cyera-shaped problem (or a comparable DSPM tool), and it's worth solving before or alongside deploying request-layer enforcement, because good policy needs to know what it's protecting. Once that map exists, DeepInspect is what enforces decisions against it at the moment an AI system touches a prompt containing that data. The two jobs are complementary. A platform lead evaluating both should expect to eventually operate both, not pick a single winner.

How does Cyera's acquisition of Oasis Security change this comparison?

It sharpens Cyera's identity story without moving its architecture into the request path. Before the deal, Cyera's AI-relevant coverage was mostly about finding sensitive data and flagging shadow AI usage. Oasis adds a real inventory of non-human identities: service accounts, OAuth tokens, API keys, and what each one is entitled to reach across an organization's systems, plus continuous monitoring of how those entitlements drift over time. That's a meaningful gap to close, and it puts Cyera ahead of several DSPM peers on the identity side. What it doesn't do is turn Cyera into a proxy that inspects and authorizes individual AI API calls in flight. The acquisition strengthens the "what exists and what's it entitled to" question. It leaves the "is this specific request permitted right now" question exactly where it was, which is the question DeepInspect's architecture is built to answer.

Which one satisfies the EU AI Act Article 12 audit requirement?

Article 12 requires automatic recording of events over the lifetime of a high-risk AI system, with enough detail to identify the natural person behind a decision and reconstruct what happened. Cyera's posture reports and risk findings describe your environment's state. They weren't built to produce a signed, per-request record tied to a specific AI decision at a specific moment. DeepInspect's architecture is built for exactly that: identity, policy version, and outcome, committed before the calling application even sees the model's response, which means the application can't suppress or edit the record afterward. If a regulator asks which model decisions touched a specific customer file, who initiated each one, and what policy governed the outcome, that's a DeepInspect-shaped answer. Cyera's inventory work supports the broader governance program Article 12 assumes exists, but it doesn't produce the per-decision evidence the article's text specifically calls for.

How does the identity distinction map to NIST's AI agent framework?

NIST's AI agent identity and authorization framework splits the problem into agent identity, delegated authority, and action lineage. Cyera and Oasis sit closest to the first pillar: verifying and inventorying what non-human identities exist and what they're entitled to, which is upstream application and identity architecture work. DeepInspect operates on the other two pillars. Delegated authority means evaluating each request against current policy, per role, at the moment it happens, a different check than confirming an identity is listed somewhere in an inventory. Action lineage means producing a structured record of who authorized a decision, under which policy, with what outcome, not a general application log. An organization doing NIST-aligned AI agent security typically needs both: identity inventory work to establish pillar one, and a request-layer enforcement point to cover pillars two and three. Neither vendor alone completes all three pillars.

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August 22, 2026

DeepInspect vs Cyera: Data Discovery Platform or Inline AI Enforcement

Cyera's $1 billion acquisition of Oasis Security expanded its data-security posture platform into non-human identity governance. This piece compares Cyera's discovery-and-classification architecture with DeepInspect's inline proxy, which enforces identity-bound policy on live LLM traffic and produces signed, per-decision audit records for every HTTP AI request.

ByParminder Singh· Founder & CEO, DeepInspect Inc.

Comparisons & Alternativesai-securityai-governanceidentity-and-authorizationzero-trustdlp

DeepInspect vs Cyera: Data Discovery Platform or Inline AI Enforcement

On July 28, Cyera agreed to acquire Oasis Security for roughly $1 billion, folding non-human identity governance into a data-security posture platform that had already raised $600 million at a $12 billion valuation. That's a serious move into AI-agent security, and I'm not going to wave it away. It also raises a fair question for anyone typing "Cyera alternative" into a search bar: does either platform answer the question that matters the moment an LLM call actually fires?

TL;DR

Cyera is a cloud-native DSPM platform. It discovers and classifies sensitive data and, since the Oasis deal, non-human identities across your environment.
DeepInspect is a stateless proxy that sits inline between authenticated users or agents and any LLM. It enforces identity-bound policy on every HTTP request and signs a per-decision audit record.
Cyera answers "what sensitive data and identities exist, and are they classified and governed correctly."
DeepInspect answers "is this specific AI request permitted right now, and can I prove the decision six months from now."
Most regulated buyers evaluating a Cyera alternative end up running a discovery platform and a request-layer enforcement point together, not choosing one over the other.

Cyera

Cyera is a cloud-native data security posture management (DSPM) platform. It connects to cloud accounts and SaaS applications, then discovers and classifies the sensitive data sitting inside them: customer PII in an S3 bucket nobody remembers creating, a finance spreadsheet shared to an entire Google Workspace domain, an unencrypted snapshot of a production database sitting in a dev account somewhere.

Cyera's roadmap has moved into AI risk over the past year, starting with shadow AI discovery (which SaaS tools and browser extensions in your environment are calling LLMs) and now, with the July 28 acquisition of Oasis Security, non-human identity and AI agent governance. I covered the $1 billion Oasis deal when it was announced. Oasis inventories service accounts and API keys, and maps what each non-human identity is entitled to reach across the estate.

That expansion is real and useful. It doesn't change what Cyera's core architecture is built to do, which is scan and classify. Cyera reports on your environment. Its architecture stops short of the HTTP path between a user or agent and an LLM. For the wider field of DSPM and data-security options, see Cyera alternatives.

DeepInspect

This is the gap DeepInspect closes. DeepInspect is a stateless proxy that sits between authenticated users and agents on one side and any LLM endpoint on the other: OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Vertex, or a self-hosted model. Every request passes through it before the request reaches the model.

For each request, DeepInspect evaluates who is asking, what role or agent identity they are acting under, what data classification applies to the prompt, and what policy governs that combination right now. The decision (permit, redact, or block) happens before the model sees the traffic. Google Mandiant's M-Trends 2026 report found that the median time from initial access to handoff between attacker groups is now 22 seconds. A platform that reports on your environment after the fact cannot intervene at that speed. DeepInspect's enforcement point sits inside the request path, not behind it.

Every decision also produces a signed, tamper-evident audit record: identity, policy version, and outcome, committed before the response reaches the calling application. That record is built for a regulator or an internal audit team reconstructing one specific decision, a different job than a dashboard that shows where sensitive data lives across the company.

If you are facing the August deadline, let's talk.

Feature comparison

Here is where the two platforms actually diverge, feature by feature.

Primary function. Cyera discovers and classifies sensitive data and identities across your cloud footprint. DeepInspect evaluates and enforces policy on individual HTTP requests to LLMs as they happen.
What gets inventoried. Cyera builds a map of where sensitive data lives (buckets, warehouses, SaaS apps) and, post-Oasis, an inventory of non-human identities and what they can reach. DeepInspect inventories nothing about your cloud environment. It evaluates the prompt and response content passing through one specific request.
Real-time enforcement. Cyera's posture findings inform policy and remediation work outside the request path. DeepInspect makes a permit, redact, or block decision on the request itself, before it reaches the model.
Model coverage. Cyera's classification work does not depend on which LLM a given tool calls. DeepInspect is model-agnostic at the enforcement layer, sitting in front of OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Vertex, and self-hosted models without a separate integration for each one.
Non-human identity depth. Oasis gives Cyera deep NHI discovery: service accounts and API keys, and what each is entitled to reach. DeepInspect evaluates the identity context it's handed at the moment of a single AI request and is not a substitute for estate-wide NHI discovery.
Audit output. Cyera produces posture reports and risk findings for security and data teams. DeepInspect produces a signed, per-decision audit record for every AI request: who, under what policy, with what outcome, timestamped.
Deployment point. Cyera connects to cloud accounts, SaaS APIs, and data stores through API integrations. DeepInspect sits inline in the traffic path between callers and LLM endpoints.
Regulatory evidence. Cyera's reports support governance and risk documentation. DeepInspect's per-decision records are built for traceability requirements like EU AI Act Article 12, where a log has to reconstruct a single decision, not describe overall posture.
Primary buyer. Cyera is typically bought by a data security or cloud security team building a posture-management program. DeepInspect is typically bought by a security or platform team proving, per request, what an AI system was allowed to do.

Pick Cyera if...

Cyera is the right call when the open question is still about what data and identities exist across your estate, not what a live request just did.

Your priority is discovering and classifying sensitive data across a cloud and SaaS footprint you haven't fully mapped yet.
You need a non-human identity inventory: every service account, OAuth token, and API key, and what each one can reach.
You're building a posture-management program and want risk findings that feed a broader data governance effort.

Pick DeepInspect if...

You need a permit, redact, or block decision on live LLM traffic, made before the request reaches the model, not a report generated afterward.
You need a tamper-evident, per-decision audit record for a regulatory review, such as the EU AI Act's Article 12 traceability requirement.
Your AI stack spans multiple LLM providers and you want one policy enforcement point in front of all of them, rather than a separate integration project per model.
You already have a rough map of where your sensitive data lives, and the open question now is what happens the moment someone, or some agent, puts it in a prompt.
You need to answer a Principal Engineer's question about a specific AI decision with a signed record, not a dashboard.

Frequently asked questions

Is Cyera a replacement for DeepInspect, or the other way around?: Neither replaces the other. They operate at different points in the stack. Cyera's discovery and classification work tells you where sensitive data and identities live across your cloud environment, which is useful groundwork for writing good policy. DeepInspect enforces that policy at the moment an AI request happens, on the actual HTTP call between an authenticated user or agent and an LLM. A security team can use Cyera's findings, this database has PHI, this service account has broad access, to shape the policies DeepInspect enforces at the request layer. Cyera's architecture stops at data discovery and identity inventory: it doesn't intercept the live call to an LLM API. DeepInspect's architecture stops at the request boundary: it inventories nothing about your cloud environment beyond what arrives inside a given prompt. Most regulated organizations end up running both, with Cyera's findings feeding the policies DeepInspect enforces in real time.
Does Cyera enforce policy on live LLM API calls?: Cyera's architecture is built for discovery and posture management, not for sitting inline on the request path between a caller and an LLM. Its scans connect to cloud accounts and SaaS applications through API integrations that run on their own schedule, then surface findings: where sensitive data sits, which identities can reach it, what's misconfigured. That's valuable input for a governance program, and it's a different architectural pattern from evaluating and acting on one specific HTTP request as it happens. If the requirement is a pass, redact, or block decision made before a prompt reaches a model, that decision has to happen at the request layer itself, which is the job DeepInspect's proxy architecture is built around. Cyera's acquisition of Oasis Security added identity and entitlement depth to its inventory, not a live enforcement point on outbound AI traffic.
Does DeepInspect discover where my sensitive data lives across my cloud environment?: No. DeepInspect isn't a discovery or posture-management tool, and it doesn't scan S3 buckets, data warehouses, or SaaS tenants looking for unclassified data at rest. Its job starts when a request reaches the proxy: it classifies the content of that specific prompt or response, evaluates the identity and policy context attached to it, and makes a decision. If your organization doesn't yet know where sensitive data lives across its cloud footprint, that's a Cyera-shaped problem (or a comparable DSPM tool), and it's worth solving before or alongside deploying request-layer enforcement, because good policy needs to know what it's protecting. Once that map exists, DeepInspect is what enforces decisions against it at the moment an AI system touches a prompt containing that data. The two jobs are complementary. A platform lead evaluating both should expect to eventually operate both, not pick a single winner.
How does Cyera's acquisition of Oasis Security change this comparison?: It sharpens Cyera's identity story without moving its architecture into the request path. Before the deal, Cyera's AI-relevant coverage was mostly about finding sensitive data and flagging shadow AI usage. Oasis adds a real inventory of non-human identities: service accounts, OAuth tokens, API keys, and what each one is entitled to reach across an organization's systems, plus continuous monitoring of how those entitlements drift over time. That's a meaningful gap to close, and it puts Cyera ahead of several DSPM peers on the identity side. What it doesn't do is turn Cyera into a proxy that inspects and authorizes individual AI API calls in flight. The acquisition strengthens the "what exists and what's it entitled to" question. It leaves the "is this specific request permitted right now" question exactly where it was, which is the question DeepInspect's architecture is built to answer.
Which one satisfies the EU AI Act Article 12 audit requirement?: Article 12 requires automatic recording of events over the lifetime of a high-risk AI system, with enough detail to identify the natural person behind a decision and reconstruct what happened. Cyera's posture reports and risk findings describe your environment's state. They weren't built to produce a signed, per-request record tied to a specific AI decision at a specific moment. DeepInspect's architecture is built for exactly that: identity, policy version, and outcome, committed before the calling application even sees the model's response, which means the application can't suppress or edit the record afterward. If a regulator asks which model decisions touched a specific customer file, who initiated each one, and what policy governed the outcome, that's a DeepInspect-shaped answer. Cyera's inventory work supports the broader governance program Article 12 assumes exists, but it doesn't produce the per-decision evidence the article's text specifically calls for.
How does the identity distinction map to NIST's AI agent framework?: NIST's AI agent identity and authorization framework splits the problem into agent identity, delegated authority, and action lineage. Cyera and Oasis sit closest to the first pillar: verifying and inventorying what non-human identities exist and what they're entitled to, which is upstream application and identity architecture work. DeepInspect operates on the other two pillars. Delegated authority means evaluating each request against current policy, per role, at the moment it happens, a different check than confirming an identity is listed somewhere in an inventory. Action lineage means producing a structured record of who authorized a decision, under which policy, with what outcome, not a general application log. An organization doing NIST-aligned AI agent security typically needs both: identity inventory work to establish pillar one, and a request-layer enforcement point to cover pillars two and three. Neither vendor alone completes all three pillars.

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