Head-to-head · updated 13 September 2026

DataShield vs Informatica CDGC: the catalog knows the data is sensitive, so what stopped the agent?

Cloud Data Governance and Catalog is a module of Informatica's IDMC platform. It's a rules module. It's good at its job. Point it at an old estate. It scans the metadata. It draws lineage back to the mainframe. It auto-sorts columns with CLAIRE. It hangs a glossary off the result. It ships governed data into a marketplace. Their own page says 5,000-plus firms trust Informatica. We believe it. Running metadata at that scale is hard. They've done it since 1993.

We're not a stand-in. DataShield is the layer under the data your agents query. We tokenize data at ingest. Agents query it over MCP. Turning a token back is a special, audited step. We check each call against the agent's current access. Before dispatch, every time. The decision seals into a hash chain. You can check it, without trusting us. A catalog tells an agent a column is sensitive. It doesn't stop the call. Below is the honest split. It includes the many rows CDGC wins.

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The short version

Pick DataShield when

Someone will ask you to prove an agent's log wasn't edited. An examiner, an internal auditor, or Article 12 of the EU AI Act. Our chain answers with math, not a rule PDF. Run the checker.
You need to pull an agent's access mid-session. The very next tool call should fail. Not the next token refresh. The next call, full stop.
The control plane has to run inside your own network. CDGC ships as part of IDMC. We found no self-hosted edition. We self-host, or run you a dedicated single-tenant server.
You want a sorting verdict you can re-derive. Ours is fixed, stamped with a config digest. The same column scores the same way next quarter. A model output isn't.

Pick Informatica CDGC when

Your estate is wide and old. Mainframes, twelve warehouses, SAP, a BI tool nobody maintains. Their connector reach took years. We won't match it.
You already run IDMC. CDGC draws on the same spend pool. It's a line on a renewal. Not a new buy. That's a large, boring edge.
The buyer is the CDO. The deliverable is a glossary, a steward org chart, and lineage a business analyst can read alone. Their UX is built for that person. Ours is built for an engineer.
You're standardizing on Agentforce 360. Being owned by Salesforce reads as a roadmap promise then, not a risk.

Bottom line: CDGC is the metadata plane for your whole estate. DataShield is the data plane for the sets agents touch. There, the job is rule checks and proof. Most buyers who talk to us keep their catalog.

Feature by feature

Competitor cells describe what Informatica's public site and press releases say. We use the date above. Did we get something wrong? Email support@myorg.ai. We'll fix it and credit you.

What matters	DataShield	Informatica CDGC	Edge
Catalog and connector breadth	We register a source over a live connection. We scan it, and check objects and columns in place. No rows leave the source. That's PostgreSQL today. Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, SQL Server, S3, Salesforce: declared. No handler yet. We say so in the config, not a footnote.	The core product, and the best part of it. Auto metadata scans across databases, files, cloud warehouses, and BI tools. Decades of connector work behind it.	◇
Lineage	Typed lineage over a fixed set of terms, walked with per-hop access checks. An edge never shows an asset you can't read. It comes from the pipelines that own the links. Not a stored column-level graph.	End to end and column-level lineage. Shared work context links tech assets to glossary terms. Deeper than ours, and better looking.	◇
Classification method	129 field classes cover PII, PHI, financial data, and secrets. All 18 HIPAA Safe Harbor identifiers, each with a rule reference. Regex plus checksum checks: Luhn, NPI, Verhoeff, ABA, IBAN, GTIN. Column-name lists and anti-pattern filters. No model, so a verdict repeats from a config digest. It shipped recently. We won't call it battle-tested.	AI-driven classification via CLAIRE. It auto-maps trade terms to tech assets. At a scale we can't touch. Ask them to re-run a verdict from six months back. Same answer?	◈
Sample handling	Catalog scans copy no column values by default. Storing plain samples needs a clear OK first. It writes an audit row. Cited to GDPR Article 5(1)(c) and minimum necessary.	Not said in their public docs. Worth asking what CDGC keeps in the cloud. Once it scans a column of medical record numbers.	◆
Audit evidence	A SHA-256 hash chain with Ed25519-signed checkpoints, themselves chained. The verdict is three-valued: clean, marked damage, or tampered. Verification names the failure: tampering, insertion, deletion, or truncation. Try the checker.	Rule reports and policy audit inside IDMC. We found no public tamper proof.	◆
Agent authorization	Each checked tool call passes a scope ceiling and a consented-tool allowlist. Plus an access tier and a live pull-check before dispatch. It fails closed.	Rule-driven governance and access flows over cataloged assets. The agent story is prepping trusted data for someone else's agent. Not clearing one call.	◆
Break-glass	Scoped, time-boxed urgent access for agents. It auto-revokes on its own. It's step-up gated. It can't be quietly deleted from the log.	Not said in their public docs.	◆
GDPR erasure	Crypto-shred of per-subject key material. Plus ISO 27560 consent receipts. Actor IDs in the chain carry HMAC marks. The proof still checks out. Even once the subject is gone.	A rules and retention flow. The erase method itself isn't said for CDGC.	◆
Tokenization	Fixed, join-preserving, vault-reversible tokens, applied at ingest. Plus generalization on quasi-identifiers. Dates become year, decade, or age band. ZIPs become 3 or 4 digits. Phones, SSNs, and emails get partial masking. Each column gets its own score. Masking and generalization are options you switch on, not defaults.	Sorting, rules, and access control. Tokenization isn't CDGC's word for it. Informatica sells privacy tools elsewhere in the platform.	◆
MCP and agents	More than 200 MCP tools, across Ontology, Auth, Corpus, and Lighthouse. Tool tokens carry scope ceilings, always. Delegation is RFC 8693 token exchange, with a firm ceiling. We meter each call and tie it to the agent.	Real and dated. On 20 May 2026 they announced Metadata Explorer, MDM, and data quality MCP servers. In preview on the AWS Agent Registry. Live now in Amazon Quick. Both US regions. It serves metadata and master data to agents.	◈
Deployment	Self-hosted, in your own cloud or data center. Or a dedicated single-tenant server we run. Docker images for Auth, Ontology, Corpus, and Lighthouse. A signed deploy manifest, checked by Guardian. Ed25519 audit-signing keys stay on your box. In a key folder you control. Key-tagged rotation fails closed on an unknown key. KMS or HSM custody is a built seam in Auth. Not a shipped link. HMAC keys sit in your setup today, not in a KMS. We won't pretend otherwise.	CDGC ships only inside IDMC, Informatica's cloud. Regional instances give you home-turf choices. We found no self-hosted or air-gapped CDGC edition.	◆
MDM alongside the catalog	In the same product: Fellegi-Sunter match on records. Jaro-Winkler, Levenshtein, Soundex, and Double Metaphone comparators. LSH blocking, EM-trained settings, five survivor picks. Plus Population Stability Index drift checks, on every live match config.	A separate IDMC module. A much longer track record. A multidomain UI. A partner network we don't have.	◈
Maturity signals	Auth, Guardian and Lighthouse are all live. Guardian and Lighthouse have run since April 2026. SOC 2 isn't certified yet, and we say so.	Founded 1993. 5,000-plus firms claimed. Bought by Salesforce in a deal that closed 18 November 2025.	◇
Pricing	Published model, scoped instant quote, no sales wall.	Consumption pricing in Informatica Processing Units, pooled across IDMC modules. No public rate for CDGC. G2's pricing tab for it is empty.	◆

◆ DataShield leads◇ Informatica CDGC leads◈ comparable

We drew Informatica claims from informatica.com. Plus Informatica and Salesforce press releases. Last checked 13 September 2026. We link them below, not just a paraphrase from memory.

Three things you get here that you won't get from an enterprise catalog

Proof that survives an audit

A log that can be quietly edited proves nothing. Ours is a hash chain with signed checkpoints. The checker tells you what broke. Not just that something did. Re-tamper a chain already marked as damaged, and it un-attests itself. That's what EU AI Act Article 12 reviewers care about. HIPAA §164.312(b) too. Try it in your browser, no signup.

Authority that can change mid-flight

An analyst leaves on a Friday. Their agent is 20 minutes into a 40-minute job, over a checked dataset. Here, we re-check the next tool call. Against current access, right then. It fails closed. A catalog will still label that column as sensitive. The job runs to completion anyway. How Auth does it.

A catalog that keeps your values out of it

Our scans work inside your PostgreSQL source. No rows leave it. Sample values default to omit. Nothing lands in the catalog. Want plain samples? Acknowledge it first, and we write an audit row. Ask any SaaS catalog what it keeps. After it scans a column of MRNs. See the Ontology surface.

Where Informatica CDGC is genuinely stronger

Breadth, and it's not close. Informatica has built connectors since 1993. CDGC gets all of it. Lineage runs end to end, down to the column. The glossary and steward workflow suit a rules office with real headcount. Not an engineer with a terminal. CLAIRE auto-maps trade terms across an estate. At a scale our fixed sorter will never reach. They publish a data market. Teams can ask for checked data instead of filing a ticket. Their agent work is real too. MCP servers for metadata, data quality, and MDM. Shipped in May 2026, into the AWS Agent Registry and Amazon Quick. Is your problem that no one knows what data the firm owns? Buy them, not us.

Here's the push-back, in two parts. First, CDGC lives in Informatica's cloud. There's no self-hosted edition we could find. Your metadata, your lineage, and your sorting results sit with a vendor. For some regulated buyers, that ends the talk before price comes up. Second, on the day the deal closed, Amit Walia called the combined firm the "Switzerland" of AI-powered data management. Switzerland is a striking word here. That business unit's chief now carries a Salesforce title. Its stated job is powering Agentforce 360. Maybe the roadmap stays neutral. Ask them how they rank a non-Salesforce request against an Agentforce one. Write down the answer.

Questions worth asking both of us

These are the questions we'd want answered, if we were the ones buying. Ask them on every call, ours included.

Can you cryptographically prove an audit log entry wasn't deleted?

DataShield: yes, it can. Each record commits to the one right before it. We sign and chain checkpoints. Verification tells deletion apart from truncation and from tampering. Run it against a sample chain at /verify. Informatica: CDGC reports on rule activity inside IDMC. We found no public tamper-proof method. Ask them to show one. And ask who can edit the store it sits in.

What happens to a revoked agent mid-session?

We re-check access on each checked tool call. The pull lands on the next call, and the context drops down. CDGC checks access to cataloged assets through rules and flow. We found no mid-session cut-off in their public docs. Ask how long a hacked agent keeps working after you pull its access. Get the number in minutes.

How does GDPR erasure interact with the audit trail?

We crypto-shred the subject's key material and issue an ISO 27560 consent receipt. Actor IDs in the chain carry HMAC marks. The proof still checks out. Even once the subject is gone. Informatica has rules and retention limits at the platform level. The erase method for CDGC isn't public. Ask for the method, not the flow.

We already run IDMC. Do we drop CDGC for DataShield?

No. Are you paying for IDMC already? Then CDGC is close to free, at the margin. We can't cover your whole estate. Keep it as the metadata plane. Put us under the specific data sets your agents query. That's where the job is: clear the call, and hold proof of it. The question to settle inside isn't which catalog. It's which layer the duty lands in. That matters when a regulator asks what an agent did on 3 March.

Informatica ships MCP servers now. What's different about yours?

Theirs serve metadata, data quality, and master data. So an agent can reason about your estate. Announced 20 May 2026. Preview on the AWS Agent Registry, live now in Amazon Quick, US regions. Good design for a catalog. Ours is where the checked data itself gets queried. Right there. The tool token carries a scope ceiling. We clear the call before dispatch. Metering ties back to the agent. The decision seals into the chain. Two different jobs. Ask them for a live reference running agent work, not a registry listing.

Does it matter that Salesforce owns Informatica now?

It might. The $8 billion deal closed on 18 November 2025. The site now brands as Informatica from Salesforce. Run a mixed stack? Ask how they rank CDGC roadmap items against Agentforce 360 ones. We're small and free of all that. It cuts both ways. No parent steering us. No parent balance sheet, either. Our design-partner terms include source escrow, for that exact reason.

Does DataShield have SOC 2?

Not yet. We won't imply otherwise, ever. Auth is live now. It ships with a public threat model and a checker anyone can run. Guardian and Lighthouse have run since April 2026. Details on the security page.

CDGC's own tagline: "Simplify, automate and scale data and AI governance to deliver trusted business outcomes." The page cites 5,000-plus enterprises. It names AI-powered classification. And automated lineage. Both headline features. - informatica.com, 13 Sep 2026
Salesforce completed its acquisition of Informatica on 18 November 2025. Amit Walia called the combined company the "Switzerland" of AI-powered data management. Steve Fisher framed it as a governed data platform for Agentforce 360. - Informatica news release, 18 Nov 2025
Salesforce agreed to acquire Informatica for about $8 billion. In equity value, at $25 per share. The goal: "a unified architecture for agentic AI." - Salesforce press release, 27 May 2025
Headless data management for AWS: Metadata Explorer, MDM and data quality MCP servers. In preview on the AWS Agent Registry. Generally available in Amazon Quick, US regions. Plus CLAIRE Agent skills in global preview. - Informatica news release, 20 May 2026
CLAIRE is positioned as "Trusted Enterprise AI, Powered by Metadata." The page carries vendor impact figures. Including $63.6M total financial impact over five years. - informatica.com, 13 Sep 2026
No public price for CDGC. G2's pricing tab for the product returns no data. - G2, 13 Sep 2026

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