This recently acquired data security firm’s had an amazing year

Summary:

• Managing unstructured data is a big task – and mastering it is key as AI tools become more widely used.
• Getvisibility’s AI-powered platform uses efficient small language models and real-time streaming to proactively identify and secure unstructured data.
• Its recent acquisition by Forcepoint has given the company the resources and global reach to scale its innovative solutions.
• Getvisibility was part of the IMDA Accreditation program, which helps nurture Singapore’s tech ecosystem.

It’s already a well-accepted fact that data is crucial for success today. However, managing data remains a challenge for many companies.

Mark Brosnan, formerly the CEO of data management and security firm Getvisibility and now the VP of engineering at Forcepoint, says many companies have “no idea what kind of risks or value” lie within their unstructured data – the mountains of documents, spreadsheets, images, and other files that account for 80% of enterprise data.

As the world hurtles toward the AI revolution, getting a grip on all that unstructured data is now business-critical.

“With AI, organizations are going to need as much data as they can get to access new tools and capabilities,” says Brosnan.

A data solution for the AI future

As organizations’ data challenges grew over time, Getvisibility saw an opportunity to offer a real solution to businesses’ problems concerning unstructured data.

Getvisibility’s AI-powered data security management platform helps companies gain visibility into the risks posed by their unstructured data, such as redundant or obsolete data, improperly accessed and misplaced files, and potentially non-compliant documents.

It assesses different types of information being added to the firm’s various data channels – such as databases and email threads – and identifies potential risks with how that information is secured.

Unlike other data tools, Getvisibility’s solution uses small language models (SLMs), the compact and efficient cousins of the better-known large language models (LLMs).

“Our mesh of finely-tuned SLMs can understand different types of data that we can then put into a classification pipeline to deliver tailored results for each user,” explains Brosnan.

Much smaller in size and scope, SLMs deliver more precise results than LLMs. SLMs are also cheaper to run, making them a popular, cost-efficient alternative.

Solving AI’s data risks

Driven by this cutting-edge solution, 2025 has been a year of many highs for Getvisibility.

One of the major highlights for the company has been the development of a new streaming feature, which brings real-time data visibility to customers – an extremely relevant feature in the age of AI.

“Up until last year, our system was really good at finding all your legacy data, but now we can apply our AI to your data as it’s being created,” Brosnan shares. “Doing that means organizations can be more proactive about their data management, which they need as more and more implement generative or agentic AI tools.”

Being proactive is critical because, although AI technologies are useful, they come with significant privacy and data security risks.

“When you have multiple LLMs talking to each other, any data that gets put through them could become available to anyone in the company because of shared permissions or poorly-classified or quarantined data,” Brosnan explains.

Those gaps could expose sensitive information such as salaries or personal health data.

“Once that gets out of the bottle, it’s very hard to put it back in because we don’t know what codes are embedded in those LLMs,” Brosnan adds.

To prevent this, firms need to “put the right permissions and data hygiene practices in place to a granular enough level,” which he says can be a challenging and labor-intensive endeavor.

Getvisibility’s solution speeds up the entire process with the support of a proprietary agentic AI workflow. This has improved the company’s data classification accuracy and reduced turnaround times by 15x the current rate, according to Brosnan.

“Our AI is built to be able to give your data not only classification but also context,” he says. “When we can do that, we unblock amazing value from AI that’s being held up from a compliance and security perspective.”

Forcepoint brings size and scale

Perhaps Getvisibility’s biggest highlight for 2025 was its March acquisition by major data security firm Forcepoint.

According to Brosnan, the move marks a significant milestone in Getvisibility’s growth journey and mission to transform how companies implement data security measures.

“Forcepoint is a real leader in terms of data security,” Brosnan says, adding that the new partnership bolsters Getvisibility’s ultimate goal: to be best in class at what it does.

“Accelerating to the size and scale we wanted, at the pace we wanted, was always going to require a much larger organization,” he says further.

Up until the acquisition, Getvisibility had been providing Forcepoint with an OEM version of some of its solutions. The partnership gave both firms a better understanding of how they complement each other, Brosnan recalls.

This has allowed them to build a strong commercial and personal relationship based on trust and confidence over the last 2.5 years. Moreover, it has given them a stronger desire to work with each other and build for scale.

Getvisibility’s solution enhances Forcepoint’s Data Security Everywhere platform. Meanwhile, Forcepoint provides Getvisibility significant benefits in terms of resources, infrastructure, and global reach, as the latter has typically been limited by its size and scale, says Brosnan.

He adds that Forcepoint’s pedigree and reach have been great because he gets to see as many people as possible use Getvisibility’s solution to solve their problems.

This, alongside being accredited by IMDA, has given the company a valuable confidence boost and a better understanding of its place in the region’s burgeoning tech markets, along with potential new partnerships in the coming years.

“Doing this at the scale that Forcepoint can provide is very, very exciting,” Brosnan shares. “We’re able to move into this larger organization and fully realize our technology’s potential, and a lot of that comes from the plans and ambitions Forcepoint has for this product.”

Staying close to the customer

Brosnan says that after the acquisition, Getvisibility plans to work on solutions for the next wave of agentic AI – a priority for its customers.

“It’s going to be a very big driver for change, and I think we’re now entering one of the most exciting shifts in technology in 30 years,” he says.

Brosnan aims to work closely with customers so the company could stay focused on its goals even as its operations and solutions evolve.

“Being patient, building the right relationships, understanding what you’re good at – and what you’re not – that’s all crucial,” he says. “If we stick to our core principles around quality, customer centricity, and utilizing the best technology, we’ll continue to be successful.”