The Future of Database Activity Monitoring Is Here

August 15, 2025

For years, the question has echoed from customers and partners alike: “When will Varonis do database activity monitoring (DAM)?”

DAM has been the missing piece in the otherwise comprehensive Varonis platform. While Varonis has long been recognized as a leader in data security, continuously evolving its platform to cover not just unstructured data, but also structured and semi-structured data, customers have struggled to find a scalable, modern solution to monitor what is happening inside their database environments. Until now.

With the acquisition of Cyral, Varonis is delivering on years of anticipation, meeting a clear market demand and redefining what is possible in database activity monitoring and reshaping how the industry approaches data security.

A Unified Vision

Historically, structured, and unstructured data security have lived in separate silos. Solutions like IBM Guardium and Imperva handle database monitoring with agents, sprawling infrastructure, and management models. Meanwhile, Varonis has led the charge in securing data with unmatched precision, automation and simplicity.

But here is the problem: attackers do not care whether your sensitive data lives in a file share, a cloud bucket or a database. So why should your security approach?

For years, Varonis has been busy unifying data protection across:

• Structured data – Snowflake, SQL Server, Oracle
• Semi-structured data – Cloud platforms, Logs, APIs
• Unstructured data – Files, Email, SaaS apps like M365 and Google

All of this is powered by a single SaaS-native platform, backed by AI-driven threat detection and supported by their managed data detection and response (MDDR) service. With the addition of DAM, they are now set to revolutionize database security as well.

To genuinely appreciate the forward leap Varonis represents, it helps to compare the old world with the new. Legacy DAM solutions were not designed for modern environments. They were built during a time when scale meant dozens of databases, not thousands, and when on-prem infrastructure was the only game in town. As organizations evolved, those platforms stayed mostly the same, resulting in bloated, over-engineered deployments that drain resources and still leave gaps. Varonis changes that paradigm with a cloud-native, minimal-footprint model that delivers maximum coverage, visibility and control, without the baggage. Let us break it down.

Legacy DAM

Legacy database monitoring tools were built for a different era. For years, the dominant players have been increasingly viewed as heavy, costly and ineffective. But let us look at why.

• Agent fatigue: Massive deployments of fragile agents and infrastructure just to monitor basic activity. In some cases, an organization can have dozens of appliances to monitor hundreds of databases. That is not security, but a complex web of ongoing maintenance.
• Slow time-to-value: Deployments take months or years to stabilize. You need professional services just to understand what the system is telling you.
• No innovation: These platforms have not evolved in over a decade. Some can barely classify sensitive data; others cannot correlate activity to user identities.

Customers do not love these platforms. They tolerate them. Often because of regulatory obligations (PCI, HIPAA, SOX, DORA), not because they drive real security outcomes.

Image

Figure 1

Figure 1 illustrates the stark contrast between traditional self-managed DAM deployments and the modern, SaaS-native approach offered by Varonis. In legacy DAM environments, even a moderately sized deployment to monitor 200 databases can quickly balloon into a sprawling mess with hundreds of agents, dozens of appliances and multiple management tiers.

These architectures are burdensome, expensive and complex, often requiring hundreds of individual vendor components just to function. Varonis flips that model on its head. By combining native audit capabilities with a lightweight, containerized collector architecture and augmenting that with the Cyral-powered Gateway Proxy, Varonis eliminates the agent sprawl and infrastructure bloat. Whether collecting logs natively or via proxy, the entire deployment requires just three vendor components to monitor the same number of databases.

Expanded Support for Modern Database Environments

The Varonis platform supports a broad range of database environments, including cloud-native platforms like Snowflake and Databricks with native audit integration, alongside enterprise mainstays such as SQL Server, Oracle and MySQL. Compatibility also extends to both relational and non-relational systems, including MongoDB, IBM DB2, MariaDB and others, whether deployed in cloud or hybrid environments.

Every integration is powered by Varonis’ flexible architecture, which supports both proxy-based data collection and native log ingestion, allowing organizations to tailor their implementation based on specific needs and infrastructure.

It is a simplified, scalable and resilient model that demonstrates a core principle: DAM should not be a bigger problem than the one it is trying to solve.

Not Just Integrating DAM. Reinventing It.

Cyral was built for the cloud era: scalable, lightweight and seamlessly deployable. Now, with Cyral's capabilities infused into the Varonis platform, customers gain access to advanced DAM functionality that legacy tools simply cannot match. This includes agentless deployment using Kubernetes containers, identity-aware activity tracking that resolves service account usage to actual users and precision access controls down to individual rows and columns. With built-in data masking and policy enforcement, you are no longer just monitoring your databases; you are actively securing them. It is a model that reduces friction, boosts visibility and crucially frees your team from the constant babysitting of legacy DAM infrastructures.

Best of all, these capabilities are supported by the same platform that already protects your files, emails and IaaS/SaaS environments with the same foundational principles that have made them a leader in data security:

• Classification with AI context
• Permissions mapping and risk visualization
• Advanced data security posture management (DSPM) capabilities
• Centralized threat detection and response with AI-driven triage and MDDR response

Varonis has long delivered its core capabilities such as classification, permissions analysis and risk management across databases, file systems and a wide range of data stores. Now, with the addition of comprehensive DAM capabilities, Varonis is completing the picture, bringing full activity monitoring and behavior analytics to structured data environments.

No matter where your data lives, structured tables, semi-structured streams or unstructured repositories, Varonis brings unified visibility, classification and control all from a single platform. It all works together. One UI. One platform. One data security story. No silos.

Answer The One Question!

At the heart of every breach investigation, every audit, every compliance review, is the same question: “What did that user do?”

With legacy tools, the answer might live across multiple products, disconnected logs and inconsistent audit trails. With Varonis, it is right in front of you.

You can see who the user is, what access they had, what queries they ran and what sensitive data they touched, all in one place. Everything they did across databases, file shares, email and cloud applications. No segregation. No more guessing.

Structured. Semi-structured. Unstructured. It is just data. And Varonis secures it all.

Why This Changes Everything

This is a moment. Varonis fully embracing the DAM space is not just a product launch, it is a market shift. Customers have been waiting. They have been asking. Varonis is delivering.

If you are still managing DAM the old way, or not at all, it is time to reconsider. The stack is lighter, the insights are deeper and the outcomes are better with Varonis.

If you are running legacy DAM solutions, ask yourself, “Is your DAM working for you, or are you working for it?”

Varonis is your chance to modernize database security without compromise. It is a chance to protect all your data, regardless of where it lives, with one solution. Unify. Simplify. Secure Everything. It is time. Optiv can help. Let’s talk.