The New Challenge of Local Data Scanning
Enterprises are under pressure to balance two opposing forces: the need to unlock insight from their data quickly, and the obligation to keep that data within strict residency and compliance boundaries. With sensitive data spread across private networks, regulated regions, and cloud environments, organizations can’t afford to compromise on security – or slow down when speed matters most.
Local scanners have long been the answer for discovering and classifying data close to its source. But deploying and managing them has often required specialized expertise, manual commands, and hours of IT time. That complexity has been a barrier to scale.
The Challenge
Until now, organizations had two primary paths for scanning: BigID’s Cloud Scanners for simple, fast, and automated deployment across cloud and SaaS environments, or traditional local scanners for sensitive workloads that must stay on-premises or within private networks. For highly regulated industries, however, setting up and maintaining local scanners has historically been complex and resource-intensive.
Manual deployment of local scanners typically involves setting up Kubernetes clusters, provisioning roles and permissions, and troubleshooting connectivity issues. Admins can spend days, or even weeks, getting a single scanner operational. The problems:
- Projects are slowed down, delaying visibility into sensitive data.
- Scarce IT resources are diverted from higher-value initiatives.
- Misconfigurations increase exposure and compliance risk.
For organizations in financial services, healthcare, government, or any environment with strict data residency requirements, these challenges limit scalability and increase operational burden.
The Solution: Managed Local Scanners
BigID’s Managed Local Scanners (MLS) remove the heavy lifting from local scanner deployment. Instead of relying on complex manual steps, admins can now launch, configure, and monitor scanners directly from the BigID console.
MLS complements BigID’s existing cloud scanners, giving organizations more flexibility in how and where they scan data. While cloud scanners deliver broad coverage across SaaS and cloud environments, Managed Local Scanners extend that same discovery capability to sensitive workloads that must remain local – ensuring consistent visibility no matter where data lives.
Here’s what sets MLS apart:
- Automated Deployment: MLS provisions the required AWS infrastructure on your behalf—including EKS, Fargate, VPC, and NAT Gateway—so teams no longer have to script or configure resources manually.
- Centralized Management: All scanners can be managed through a single interface in BigID. Admins can create new scanners, view status, and oversee performance from one place.
- Continuous Oversight: MLS tracks scanner health, memory usage, threads, connected data sources, and software versions. This visibility makes it easier to keep scanners up-to-date and optimized.
- Flexible Scaling: Set minimum and maximum scanners to balance cost and performance. Whether you want a single always-on scanner or elastic groups that expand with demand, MLS adapts to your needs.
- Built-In Compliance Benefits: By keeping data local to the region and environment where it resides, MLS supports strict residency requirements and reduces the risk of sensitive data leaving secure boundaries.
Benefits & Outcomes
- Accelerated Time to Value: Go from setup to scanning in minutes instead of weeks, delivering faster insights.
- Reduced Operational Burden: Eliminate manual deployment and updates, freeing IT teams to focus on higher-value projects.
- Improved Security & Compliance: Keep sensitive data within your AWS environment to address residency and regulatory requirements.
- Dynamic Scalability: Scale scanners up or down based on workload, optimizing costs without sacrificing performance.
- Proactive Monitoring: Track health, memory, and usage to identify bottlenecks before they become problems.
- Consistent Governance: Maintain visibility across scanners and data sources for unified management of discovery efforts.
Why Now
As data sprawl increases and compliance pressures tighten, organizations need faster, easier ways to operationalize discovery without sacrificing security. MLS is designed to help teams keep pace—reducing friction while strengthening trust in their data.
With Managed Local Scanners, BigID empowers enterprises to simplify deployment, accelerate insight, and maintain control over their most sensitive data. Set up a 1:1 with one of our BigID experts today to learn more!
Author
