Head-to-head · updated 13 September 2026

DataShield vs Skyflow: which one can prove what your AI agents did?

Skyflow built a very good privacy vault. Keeping card numbers out of scope? They're a fine choice. But an AI agent isn't a payment form. It makes hundreds of tool calls a day. Its access can change mid-job. One day a regulator will ask you to prove it. Which calls were allowed?

We built DataShield for that. Datasets get tokenized at ingest. We check each tool call against the agent's current access. We seal each check into a hash chain. You can verify it without trusting us. Below is where the two differ, with sources. Rows Skyflow wins included.

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The short version

Pick DataShield when

An auditor or examiner will ask you to prove an access log wasn't edited. Article 12 will too, eventually. Our chain answers with math. Not a policy document. Run the verifier.
You need to pull an agent's access mid-job. The very next tool call should fail. Not wait for a token to expire.
Your security team wants the vault, the rule engine, and the evidence on your own infrastructure. With keys you hold.
You'd rather see a price before you book a call.

Pick Skyflow when

The core problem is PCI DSS scope reduction for payment data. Their Level 1 vault is home turf. We don't have a PCI story.
You need compute on encrypted data. Their polymorphic encryption lets you search and add up numbers without decrypting. Our tokens are deterministic and join-preserving. But we don't do ciphertext math.
You want an inline gateway. One that hides prompts on the way to the model, and restores them on the way back. We deliberately don't sit inline. See the FAQ for why.
Data residency per region is a hard rule. Self-hosting isn't on the table.

Bottom line: Skyflow protects data in flight. DataShield governs what an agent can do with data. It keeps proof of it, too. Some teams run both. Can you only fund one? Is your exposure agents, not payments? Start here.

Feature by feature

Competitor cells describe what Skyflow's public site and docs say. As of the date above. Did we get something wrong? Email support@myorg.ai. We'll fix it, and credit you.

What matters	DataShield	Skyflow	Edge
Audit evidence	A SHA-256 hash chain with Ed25519-signed checkpoints. Those checkpoints chain too. Verification names the failure: tampering, insertion, deletion, or truncation. Try the verifier.	Access logging and reporting. We found no published cryptographic tamper evidence.	◆
Agent authorization	Every checked tool call passes a scope ceiling. Plus an access tier and a revoke re-check before dispatch. Revoke lands mid-job.	Policy-based access control on vault data. No agent authority tiers. No mid-job revoke, either.	◆
Break-glass	Scoped, time-boxed emergency access for agents. It auto-revokes. It can't be quietly deleted from the log.	Not offered.	◆
GDPR erasure	Crypto-shred of per-subject key material. Plus ISO 27560 consent receipts. The audit chain stays verifiable after erasure.	Vault deletion and region residency vaults. No documented effect on audit history.	◆
Tokenization	Deterministic, join-preserving, vault-reversible tokens, applied at ingest. Plus quasi-identifier generalization. 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 cardinality-reduction score. Turning a token back is a privileged, logged step.	Patented polymorphic encryption. It runs search and math on encrypted data. Multiple token formats. Rehydration governed by PBAC.	◇
Inline prompt gateway	We do not proxy your LLM traffic. We do gate each value. Each one that leaves a checked dataset for a prompt. A PII or PHI column with no set rule? We redact it. A PHI dataset refuses any AI endpoint. Unless it's marked BAA or ZDR approved. That's a gate on our own data path. Not an inline product.	Yes. It hides prompt traffic before the LLM sees it. It restores it after.	◇
MCP and agents	Native MCP endpoints on Auth, Ontology, and Lighthouse. MCP tool tokens carry scope ceilings. Per-call metering ties back to the agent.	MCP data protection layer wraps data flows. No tool-level agent identity described.	◆
Deployment	Self-hosted, in your own cloud or data center. Or on a dedicated single-tenant server we run. Your keys.	SaaS vault with region residency. Plus AWS and Google Cloud marketplace listings.	◆
Payments / PCI	No PCI DSS attestation. Not our market.	PCI DSS Level 1 vault. A strong descoping story.	◇
Maturity signals	Auth, Guardian, and Lighthouse are live in production. Guardian and Lighthouse have run since April 2026. SOC 2 not yet certified, and we say so.	Founded 2019, roughly $100M raised. SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA-eligible. Named enterprise customers.	◇
Pricing	Published model. A scoped instant quote. No sales wall.	Quote-only. Enterprise deals. No dollar figures on their pricing page.	◆

◆ DataShield leads◇ Skyflow leads◈ comparable

Skyflow claims come from skyflow.com and Skyflow's own announcements. Last checked 13 September 2026. We link them below rather than paraphrase from memory.

Three things you get here that you won't get from a vault

Proof that survives an audit

A log can be silently edited. That log has no value as evidence. Ours is a hash chain with signed checkpoints. The verifier tells you what went wrong. Not just that something did. That's the property Article 12 and HIPAA §164.312(b) reviewers care about. Try it in your browser, no signup.

Authority that can change mid-flight

An analyst leaves. Their agent is still running a 40-minute job. With DataShield, we re-check the next tool call. Against current access. It fails closed. With a vault, the token rides until it expires. How Auth does it.

An erasure you can defend

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

Where Skyflow is genuinely stronger

We'd rather you hear this from us. Skyflow has been shipping since 2019. They have a PCI DSS Level 1 vault. Plus SOC 2 Type II. They count GoodRx and Lenovo as customers. Their polymorphic encryption is real, and patented. You run searches and totals over the data. It never gets decrypted. Is your workload payments? Do you need per-region residency vaults? Or an inline gateway that scrubs prompts before they reach the model? Those are fair reasons to choose them.

But does any of that answer the agent question? We don't think so. Gartner expects most bad agent calls through 2028 to be policy slips. Not attacks. Finding a secret in a prompt tells you little. It doesn't say if the agent was allowed to call the tool that made it. A vault access log proves nothing, either. It can't show the entry wasn't changed later. That's the layer we sell.

Questions worth asking both of us

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

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

DataShield: yes. Each record commits to the one before it. We sign and chain each checkpoint. Verification tells deletion apart from truncation and from tampering. Run it against a sample chain at /verify. Skyflow's docs describe access logging and reporting. We found no published tamper-evidence check. Ask them to show one.

What happens to a revoked agent mid-job?

DataShield re-checks access on each checked tool call. Revoke takes effect on the next call. Skyflow's PBAC engine controls vault access. It checks at the point of use. We found no description of agent access tiers. Nor of mid-job revoke. Ask how long a compromised agent keeps working. Even after you pull its access.

Why doesn't DataShield sit inline like Skyflow's gateway?

Because inline scrubbing means raw data was in the path. You're trusting a regex to catch it. We tokenize datasets at ingest instead. What the agent queries over MCP never held the raw value. Turning a token back is a privileged, audited vault step. The trade-off is honest. Need to hide free-form prompts on the fly? Skyflow's gateway does that. We don't.

How does GDPR erasure interact with the audit trail?

DataShield crypto-shreds per-subject key material. It issues an ISO 27560 consent receipt too. Actor identities in the chain carry HMAC commitments, not names. You can still verify the proof, even after the subject is gone. Skyflow documents vault deletion and residency vaults. The effect on audit history isn't described. Ask whether erasing a subject breaks the log.

Can we run the whole thing on our own infrastructure?

DataShield: yes. Self-hosted, or on a dedicated single-tenant server we run. With your keys. Skyflow: a SaaS vault. With region residency options and marketplace deployment. Is 'nothing leaves our account' a hard rule for you? Then that's a real difference.

Does DataShield have SOC 2?

Not yet, and we won't imply otherwise. Auth is live with a public threat model. Anyone can run the verifier. Guardian and Lighthouse have been in production since April 2026. Design-partner terms include source escrow. That way, a small vendor isn't a single point of failure. Details on the security page.

Skyflow's current positioning: "Agents break data security." Primary CTA is a demo request. - skyflow.com, 13 Sep 2026
Skyflow for Glean brings "runtime data control" to enterprise AI search. - Business Wire, 25 Aug 2026
No published pricing; enterprise agreements and marketplace listings. - skyflow.com/pricing, 13 Sep 2026
Through 2028, 80% or more of unauthorized agent transactions will be internal policy violations, not attacks. - Gartner, 2026
EDPB names pseudonymization as a GDPR risk mitigation for AI models. - EDPB Opinion 28/2024

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