Head-to-head · updated 13 September 2026

DataShield vs Oasis Security: who counts your agent identities, and who stops one mid-job?

Oasis Security built the best answer we've seen. The question is boring but awful. How many non-human identities do you have? Who owns each one? Their Ownership Discovery Engine finds out. It works out the human behind an orphaned account. It reads the account's behavior. That is real work. We don't do it. In September 2026, Cyera closed a $1B deal. Oasis became Cyera Identity.

DataShield starts one step later. We're an identity control plane for agents. We are not a scanner. We tokenize datasets at ingest. Agents query tokenized data over MCP. Detokenization is a privileged, audited step. DataShield checks each controlled tool call. It checks the agent's access first. The check runs before the call. Each decision seals into a hash chain. You can verify the chain on your own. Below is where we differ. Sources are included. We also show the rows Oasis wins.

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The short version

Pick DataShield when

You need the answer at the moment a tool call happens. Every governed call passes a scope ceiling, a declared authority tier, and a revocation re-check before dispatch. How Auth does it.
An examiner, or the EU AI Act's Article 12, will ask you to prove the access record wasn't edited. Our chain answers with math. Run the verifier.
An agent needs emergency access at 2am and you want it scoped, time-boxed, auto-revoked, and impossible to quietly delete from the log.
The control plane has to run inside your own account, on your keys, self-hosted or a dedicated single-tenant server.

Pick Oasis Security when

You don't know what you have. Inventory across IdPs, vaults, cloud and SaaS is their home turf. It's the right first move if your estate is a mystery.
You need ownership attribution. Their engine infers the human owner of an NHI from its behaviour and checks context over email and Slack. We have nothing like it.
Secret rotation and decommissioning orphaned service accounts at estate scale is the project. They report 35% less rotation effort at one Fortune 500 customer.
You're already a Cyera shop. Cyera Identity now sits next to the data map, and one vendor with one contract is a legitimate reason to buy.

Bottom line: Oasis tells you which non-human identities exist and who owns them. We decide whether a given agent call is allowed, and keep proof of the decision. Most buyers with a real agent estate end up wanting both. If you already know your inventory and the open question is enforcement and evidence, start here.

Feature by feature: NHI management versus agent authorization

Competitor cells describe Oasis Security's own claims. We draw these from their public site. We also use press releases and partner announcements, as of the date above. Did we get something wrong? Email support@myorg.ai. We'll fix it and credit you.

What matters	DataShield	Oasis Security	Edge
NHI discovery and inventory	None. We control the agents you register. We don't hunt for ones you forgot.	A six-pillar platform: Inventory, Ownership, Context, Posture, Remediation, Lifecycle. It's agentless. It spans IdPs, vaults, cloud and SaaS.	◇
Ownership attribution	Not offered. A human registers each agent. They register it to an org, app and instance. We already know that human.	Their NHI Ownership Discovery Engine infers the owner. It reads behavior and digital footprint. It adds Slack and email context. This is distinctive and hard to copy.	◇
Agent authorization	The MCP tool token carries a scope ceiling. It carries a declared access tier. Each controlled dispatch gets a revoke re-check. The revoke lands mid-session.	"Access control that understands intent, not just static roles and permissions." Access is time-bound. In the Zscaler deal, the block runs inline. But it runs on Zscaler's Zero Trust Exchange, not on Oasis.	◆
Audit evidence	A SHA-256 row chain, with Ed25519-signed checkpoints. The checkpoints are chained too. Verification names the failure: tampering, insertion, deletion, or truncation. Try the verifier.	They name audit oversight as a gap they close. Same for compliance reports. We found no public, signed proof of tamper evidence.	◆
Break-glass	Emergency access for agents is scoped and time-boxed. It auto-revokes. It stays in the chain.	Not named in their public info.	◆
GDPR erasure	We crypto-shred per-subject key material and add ISO 27560 consent receipts. We HMAC-commit actor identities. So the chain still verifies after erasure.	Not named. NHI tools mostly handle logins. They don't handle data subjects.	◆
Data handling and tokenization	We tokenize datasets at ingest. Agents query tokenized data over MCP. Detokenization is a privileged, audited step. Our tokens are deterministic. They keep joins intact. We also mask quasi-identifiers. Dates become a year, decade, or age band. ZIPs shrink to 3 or 4 digits. Phones, SSNs and emails get partial masks. Each column gets a measured drop-in-uniqueness score.	Not a data-layer product. They cover credentials and permissions, not records. Cyera's DSPM side covers the data map.	◆
Secret rotation and lifecycle	Connection Vault holds encrypted per-subject credentials. It covers connections we broker. It spans eight strategies, including Snowflake keypair-JWT. This is not an estate-wide rotation program.	They handle safe secret rotation and cover the full lifecycle, creation to decommission. They integrate with HashiCorp, Azure Key Vault, AWS KMS and GCP.	◇
MCP and agents	We run native MCP endpoints. They're on Auth, Ontology and Lighthouse. MCP tool tokens carry scope ceilings. We attribute per-call metering to the agent.	They call this Agentic Access Management. They link up with AI tools, OpenAI among them. We found no MCP tool-token issuance named. We found no per-call metering named either.	◆
Deployment	You can self-host, in your own cloud or data center. Or we run a dedicated single-tenant server. Either way, your keys.	It's SaaS, agentless by design. That's what makes the integration breadth work.	◆
Maturity and independence	Auth, Guardian and Lighthouse are live in production. Guardian and Lighthouse shipped in April 2026. We're not SOC 2 certified yet. We say so up front. We're a small, independent team.	Founded in 2022. They raised $195M total. That includes a $120M Series B in 2026. They have the GuidePoint channel and Fortune 500 references. Cyera acquired them for $1B on 3 September 2026. They're now named Cyera Identity.	◇
Pricing	A published model. A scoped instant quote. No sales wall.	Quote-only. Packaging under Cyera is not yet public.	◆

◆ DataShield leads◇ Oasis Security leads◈ comparable

We draw Oasis Security claims from oasis.security. We also use its newsroom. And the Cyera acquisition release. Last checked 13 September 2026. We link sources below. We don't paraphrase from memory.

Three things you get here that you won't get from an NHI posture platform

A decision, not a finding

Posture tells you an ID has too much access. That's useful. But did the last call go out ok? Posture doesn't say. Ours does. The check runs before dispatch. It fails closed. See the control plane.

Proof that survives an audit

A log that can be silently edited proves nothing. Ours is a hash chain with signed checkpoints. The verifier names what went wrong. It doesn't just say something did. EU AI Act Article 12 reviewers care about that. So does HIPAA §164.312(b). Try it in your browser. No signup.

An erasure you can defend

GDPR says delete. Your auditor says keep the log. Crypto-shred settles it. We destroy the subject's key material. The data becomes unreadable. The chain still verifies. See the diagram.

Where Oasis Security is genuinely stronger

Discovery is harder than it looks. Oasis is good at it. Most enterprises have thousands of service accounts. They have API keys and tokens too. Many have no owner or expiry. Many have no record of why they exist. Oasis finds them. It works out who is responsible. It scores the risk. It drives the cleanup. They cite NHIs outnumbering humans by roughly 20 to 1. They also cite one more stat: 46% hit by an NHI breach in a year. Those are their numbers. But the shape matches what we hear on calls. Their list of tie-ins is long. Their GuidePoint channel program gives them reach. Funding helped too: they raised $195M. That bought four years of hard, focused work. We can't match any of that. We won't pretend otherwise.

The push-back is about where the block happens. Oasis announced its Zscaler deal in June 2026. The split was stated plainly there. Oasis owns the ID lifecycle. Zscaler's Zero Trust setup blocks bad calls, right on the wire. That's a smart design. It's also an admission. A list with a risk score can't say no on its own. It can't stop a bad call at 3:47pm. A compliance report can't convince an examiner by itself. It can't prove the record is whole. Those are two different jobs. Those are the jobs we build.

Questions worth asking both of us

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

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

DataShield: yes. Each record ties to the one before it. Checkpoints are signed and linked too. The check tells deletion from cut from tamper. Run it against a sample chain at /verify. Oasis Security: their material names audit oversight as a problem they solve. But we found no public tamper-check method. Ask them this: can a third party check the record? Can they do it without trusting the platform?

What happens to a revoked agent mid-session?

DataShield re-checks access on each controlled tool call. The revoke lands on the next call. Say an analyst leaves at 11am. Their agent is 20 minutes into a 40-minute job. The next call fails closed. For Oasis, ask a sharp question. Does the platform itself block the call? Or does it hand off the block? Maybe to Zscaler. Maybe to the login system or target app. The Zscaler release suggests the latter. The answer changes your blast radius.

Is DataShield an alternative to Oasis Security for NHI discovery?

No. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling. We don't scan your estate. We don't infer ownership of orphaned accounts. Nothing here runs a fleet-wide secret rotation program, either. Does "Oasis Security alternative" mean "finds my non-human identities"? Then look at Astrix, Entro or Natoma. Does it mean "decides and proves what my agents can do"? Then that's us. The two jobs sit side by side.

What does the Cyera acquisition change for a buyer?

Cyera closed the $1B deal on 3 September 2026. Oasis is now Cyera Identity. It's an ID slice inside a bigger data-security platform. That's a real gain in cash and reach. If you already run Cyera, it's simpler for you. Still, ask about roadmap and packaging. A slice competes for attention differently than a full company does. The wider trend is worth naming too. Astrix went to Cisco. Oasis went to Cyera. Standalone tools in this space are fewer than a year ago. We're independent and self-hostable. That's a preference, not a virtue. See our /compare/cyera page for the platform side.

How does GDPR erasure interact with the audit trail?

DataShield crypto-shreds per-subject key material. We issue an ISO 27560 consent receipt too. We lock in actor identities in the chain. So the proof stays valid after the subject is gone. Oasis handles logins, not data subjects. This mostly isn't their job. That's fine. Just don't assume an NHI tool covers your Article 17 duty.

Does DataShield have SOC 2?

Not yet. We won't imply otherwise. Auth is live with a public threat model. Anyone can run the check tool. Guardian and Lighthouse have been live since April 2026. Design-partner terms include source escrow. So a small vendor isn't a single point of failure. Details are on the security page.

Oasis positioning, verbatim: "Access control that understands intent, not just static roles and permissions." They list six pillars: Inventory, Ownership, Context, Posture, Remediation, Lifecycle. - oasis.security, 13 Sep 2026
Cyera completed its acquisition of Oasis Security for $1B. Oasis becomes Cyera Identity, a dedicated identity pillar. - Cyera press release, 3 Sep 2026
Oasis controls the NHI lifecycle. Zscaler's Zero Trust Exchange enforces policy inline across connections. - PR Newswire, 10 Jun 2026
NHI Ownership Discovery Engine finds NHI owners from behavior. It cites NHIs outnumbering humans about 20x. It cites 46%+ of firms hit by an NHI breach in 12 months. - Digital IT News, 31 Oct 2024
The GuidePoint Security channel deal is framed as a way to make NHI tools mainstream. - PR Newswire, 30 Apr 2025
Through 2028, ≥80% of unauthorized agent transactions will be internal policy violations, not attacks. - Gartner, 2026

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