News

CyberDesk Recognized as a Rising Star by KuppingerCole

Redefining access management with graph-based governance across identities and data: We are proud to announce that CyberDesk has been featured as a Rising Star in the KuppingerCole Rising Stars Report, an acknowledgment of our commitment to innovation in Data Access Governance (DAG) and our mission to help organizations secure their most valuable asset — their data.

Munich, Germany – February 11, 2026 – CyberDesk has been recognized as a Rising Star in the KuppingerCole Rising Stars Report, highlighting the company’s innovation in Data Access Governance (DAG) and its identity-centric, graph-based approach to securing access across modern data environments.

A Leader in the Evolving Data Access Governance Market

The KuppingerCole Rising Star designation highlights the most innovative and high-potential companies shaping the future of identity and cybersecurity. This recognition is awarded to organizations demonstrating exceptional innovation, market traction, and a bold vision for solving the industry’s most pressing challenges.

Being named a Rising Star reflects our commitment to delivering identity-centric data security that empowers organizations to govern access intelligently, adaptively, and securely. It affirms that our approach — connecting identity and data to answer “Who can do what with what data?” — resonates with today’s dynamic enterprise environments.

Our graph-based platform helps organizations uncover, understand, and manage access entitlements across structured and unstructured data — from file shares to cloud systems. By visualizing complex relationships and dependencies, we make it easier for both administrators and data owners to collaborate, take action, and reduce access risks.

Key highlights of our solution include:

Graph-driven visualization to illuminate entitlement structures
Identity-focused governance, mapping users to the data they can access
Lean integration architecture supporting a wide ecosystem of data sources
Shared interface for IT and business roles to work seamlessly together

What This Recognition Means

KuppingerCole’s recognition of CyberDesk highlights how our platform redefines data access governance through graph-powered entitlement visibility, dynamic access control, and deep integration across hybrid ecosystems. The CyberDesk platform gives organizations a unified layer of visibility and enforcement that spans both structured and unstructured data. Our solution supports teams in reducing over-entitlements, minimizing data exposure, and meeting the requirements of modern regulations like DORA and NIS2. This honor reflects the dedication of our team and our shared mission: to bring clarity, control, and confidence to data access across the enterprise.

“Data Access Governance is critical for mitigating access-related risks, including over-entitlements that could expose organizations to malicious internal threats or external breaches. CyberDesk’s solution effectively addresses these risks while supporting compliance with regulations requiring the enforcement of least privilege. […] Its unique selling proposition (USP) lies in empowering organizations to mitigate access-related risks and enforce the principle of least privilege at the structured and unstructured data store and asset level efficiently and effectively. […] Their core offering is an innovative solution leveraging a unique graph-based approach to entitlement visualization, positioning them as a leader in next-generation data access governance.”

– Martin Kuppinger, KuppingerCole Rising Star Report

This industry recognition by KuppingerCole confirms that our innovative direction aligns with what organizations need: clear, actionable insights into their data access landscape. It reflects our dedication to helping customers prevent breaches, enforce least-privilege policies, and stay compliant with ever-evolving regulations.

Why We Focus on Data Access Governance

At CyberDesk, we focus on Data Access Governance (DAG) because it is one of the most critical — and under-addressed — aspects of modern cyber security. As organizations grow more complex, so do their data environments. Unstructured data sprawls across file shares, cloud platforms, and collaborative tools, often without clear oversight. In this complexity, the simple question “Who has access to what?” becomes increasingly difficult to answer — and increasingly dangerous to ignore.

Our focus on DAG is driven by the belief that:

Visibility is security. You can’t protect what you can’t see — and access blind spots are a leading cause of data breaches.
Data is the real asset. Identity, systems, and policies exist to protect data. DAG aligns security efforts directly with that goal.
Regulatory compliance depends on access control. Frameworks like DORA, NIS2, and GDPR all require organizations to enforce least-privilege access.
Traditional IAM leaves a gap. While Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) tools manage who people are, DAG governs what they can access — especially in the unstructured data layer.

By combining identity context with data-level visibility, CyberDesk enables organizations to minimize data exposure, mitigate risk, and ensure that the right identities have the right access at the right time.

DAG is no longer nice to have — it is the foundation of responsible, modern data security.

Moving Forward

At CyberDesk, our vision is clear: Make data safer by bringing visibility to the question “Who has access to what?” In an age where data breaches are increasingly driven by excessive or unmanaged access rights, we focus on solving this challenge through an identity-centric approach to data governance. Our graph-based platform helps organizations uncover, understand, and manage access entitlements across unstructured data — from file shares to cloud systems. By visualizing complex relationships and dependencies, we make it easier for both administrators and data owners to collaborate, take action, and reduce access risks.

We’re incredibly proud of our team and grateful to our partners and clients for your trust. Together, we’re setting a new standard for visibility-driven, identity-centric data security.

Stay tuned. We’re just getting started.

— The CyberDesk Team

Ready to Get Started?

Do not leave your business vulnerable. Contact CyberDesk today for a free security assessment and to learn more about how we can protect your data.

Founders

Dr. Tobias Lieberum & Prabhakar Mishra

Year of foundation

2022

Headquarters

Munich, Germany

About KuppingerCole

Founded in 2004, KuppingerCole is a global, independent analyst organization headquartered in Europe. We specialize in providing vendor-neutral advice, expertise, thought leadership, and practical relevance in Cybersecurity, Digital Identity & IAM (Identity and Access Management), Cloud Risk and Security, and Artificial Intelligence, as well as technologies enabling Digital Transformation. We assist companies, corporate users, integrators, and software manufacturers to address both tactical and strategic challenges by making better decisions for their business success. Balancing immediate implementation with long-term viability is central to our philosophy.

KuppingerCole Analysts supports IT professionals with exceptional expertise to define IT strategies and make relevant decisions. As a leading analyst firm, KuppingerCole offers firsthand, vendor-neutral information. Our services enable you to make decisions crucial to your business with confidence and security.

For further information, please contact clients@kuppingercole.com.

About CyberDesk

Founded in 2022, CyberDesk is the fine-grained authorization layer built for the modern enterprise. Today, more than 95% of data access rights go unused. To reduce this attack surface, CyberDesk helps organizations adaptively control who can take what actions on which data. Covering both human and non-human identities, our dynamic access graph visualizes, manages, and automates entitlements, where existing solutions are blind.

Leading international organizations choose CyberDesk to prepare their hybrid, multi-cloud environments for the AI age and to mitigate liability risks under regulations such as DORA and NIS2.

CyberDesk is based in Munich, Germany.