Head-to-head · updated 13 September 2026
DataShield vs Natoma: who governs the MCP pipe, and who can prove the agent was allowed?
Natoma is good at a problem most teams have right now. Your engineers wired up MCP servers over a weekend, nobody wrote it down, and Natoma's scans find about 225 of them per company. They give you a registry, a proxy, role-based toolsets, Cedar-powered authorization, and a free tier you can try before lunch. Snowflake agreed to buy them in May 2026, which tells you the category is real.
DataShield sits one layer down. Datasets are tokenized at ingest; agents query tokenized data over MCP; detokenization is a privileged, audited operation. Every governed tool call gets re-checked against the agent's current authority, and every decision lands in a hash chain you can verify without trusting us. Below is where the two really differ, sources included, and yes, some rows go to Natoma.
The short version
Pick DataShield when
- An examiner, an auditor, or the EU AI Act's Article 12 will one day ask you to prove the agent log wasn't edited. A SIEM export can't answer that. A hash chain can. Run the verifier.
- You need to pull an agent's authority mid-session and have the very next tool call fail, not wait for a token to time out.
- You want the policy plane, the credentials, and the evidence inside your own infrastructure, on your keys, without it being the top pricing tier.
- You'd rather not have your agent control plane owned by your data warehouse vendor. How we deploy.
Pick Natoma when
- Your first problem is finding the shadow agents. We don't scan for unmanaged MCP servers. They do, and they're good at it.
- You want one-click enterprise MCP: a registry of ready-made servers, a proxy, and role-based toolsets that a platform team can stand up fast.
- You need a free tier to prove the idea internally before anyone signs anything. Five servers, five users, 5,000 tool calls a month.
- Snowflake is already your data platform, and a control plane that ships inside it is a feature, not a worry.
Bottom line: Natoma governs the pipe your agents reach through. DataShield governs the data at the far end and keeps proof of every decision. Plenty of teams will run both. If the thing that keeps you up is the audit rather than the inventory, start here.
Feature by feature
Competitor cells describe what Natoma's public site and docs say as of the date above. If we've mischaracterised something, email support@myorg.ai and we'll correct it, credited.
| What matters | DataShield | Natoma | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audit evidence | SHA-256 hash chain with Ed25519-signed checkpoints that are themselves chained. Verification names the failure: tampering, insertion, deletion, or truncation. Public verifier. | Audit logs plus SIEM and OTel export, at the Enterprise tier. We found no claim of cryptographic tamper evidence. | ◆ |
| Agent authorization | Every governed tool call passes a scope ceiling, a declared authority tier, and a revocation re-check before dispatch. Cedar handles admin, config, and token decisions, with policy_explain for readable reasoning. | Cedar-powered authorization that they say evaluates every tool call with identity and context, plus device posture from CrowdStrike, EDR, and MDM signals. Genuinely strong. | ◈ |
| Mid-session revocation | Revoke or suspend an agent and the next governed call fails closed. The running job stops there, not at token expiry. | Not described in their public docs. Worth asking how long a revoked agent keeps working. | ◆ |
| Break-glass | Scoped, time-boxed emergency access for agents that auto-revokes and can't be quietly deleted from the log. | We couldn't find a break-glass mechanism in their public docs. | ◆ |
| GDPR erasure | Crypto-shred of per-subject key material plus ISO 27560 consent receipts. The audit chain still verifies after the subject is erased. | GDPR and CCPA compliant as a company. How erasure interacts with retained tool-call logs isn't documented. | ◆ |
| Tokenization and data handling | Datasets are tokenized at ingest; agents query tokenized data over MCP; detokenization is a privileged, audited operation. Deterministic, join-preserving tokens plus quasi-identifier generalization (dates to year, decade or age band; ZIPs to 3 or 4 digits; partial phones, SSNs and emails) with a measured cardinality-reduction score per column. | DLP filters and risky-action blocking on the proxy path, at the Enterprise tier. Data stays in the source system. | ◆ |
| Shadow agent discovery | None. We govern the servers you've registered with us. We are not a discovery tool and won't pretend to be. | Agentless discovery of agents, MCP servers, and tool calls. Their scans average 225 MCP servers per company. | ◇ |
| MCP server catalog | Native MCP endpoints on Auth, Ontology, and Lighthouse, and MCP tool tokens with scope ceilings for anything else you connect. No marketplace of pre-built servers. | Enterprise MCP registry, runtime and proxy, a server builder and inspector, and support for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and custom clients. | ◇ |
| Credentials | Connection Vault holds encrypted per-subject credentials across eight strategies, including Snowflake keypair JWT. | Bring your own vault at the Enterprise tier, plus a 1Password integration that pulls credentials at runtime so they never sit in agent config. | ◈ |
| Deployment | Self-hosted or dedicated single-tenant, on your keys, in every plan. | SaaS by default. Self-hosted MCP servers arrive at Pro, full on-prem deployment at Enterprise. | ◆ |
| Maturity signals | Auth, Guardian and Lighthouse are live in production (Guardian and Lighthouse since April 2026). SOC 2 not yet certified, and we say so. | Launched March 2025, SOC2 certified, Index Ventures backing, HPE as a named reference, 1.8m tool calls a day, and a signed agreement to be acquired by Snowflake. | ◇ |
| Pricing | Published model, scoped instant quote, no sales wall. | Free tier with real limits, then Pro and Enterprise at contact-sales. Audit logs and on-prem sit in Enterprise. | ◈ |
◆ DataShield leads◇ Natoma leads◈ comparable
Natoma claims are drawn from natoma.ai and Natoma's own blog posts, 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 an MCP gateway
Proof, not just logs
A log you can quietly edit proves nothing. Ours is a hash chain with signed checkpoints, and the verifier tells you what broke, not just that something did. That's the property EU AI Act Article 12 and HIPAA §164.312(b) reviewers care about. Try it in your browser, no signup.
Authority that changes mid-flight
An analyst resigns on a Tuesday. Their agent is 20 minutes into a 40-minute job. Here the next governed tool call is re-checked against current authority and fails closed. Through a gateway, the session usually rides until the token expires. How Auth does it.
An erasure you can defend
GDPR says delete the person. Your auditor says keep the record. Crypto-shred settles it: the subject's key material is destroyed, the data goes unreadable, and the chain still verifies. See the diagram.
Where Natoma is genuinely stronger
We'd rather you hear this from us. Natoma shipped in March 2025, is SOC2 certified, has HPE's networking CIO on the record, and reports 1.8m tool calls a day across its customers. Their discovery work is the best hook in this market: they scan, they find roughly 225 MCP servers per company, and most security teams had no idea. They also use Cedar for tool-call authorization and even published a comparison of OPA and Cedar, so this is a deliberate architecture, not a checkbox. If your first job is inventory and a fast on-ramp for a hundred MCP servers, they beat us on that day one, and a free tier means you can find out yourself.
The push-back is about what happens after you have the inventory. Gartner expects most unauthorized agent transactions through 2028 to be internal policy violations rather than attacks, which means the interesting question isn't whether you spotted the server but whether the call it served was allowed, and whether you can still show that a year later. Audit logs land in Natoma's Enterprise tier and export to SIEM, and SIEM records are mutable by design. There's also a strategy question that has nothing to do with features: once the Snowflake deal closes, your agent control plane belongs to a data platform vendor. For some buyers that's convenient. For a bank running Databricks, it's a procurement conversation nobody wanted.
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 commits to the one before it, checkpoints are signed and chained, and verification tells deletion from truncation from tampering. Run it against a sample chain at /verify. Natoma: their Enterprise tier includes audit logs with SIEM and OTel export. We found no published tamper-evidence mechanism. Ask them to show one.
What happens to a revoked agent mid-session?
DataShield re-checks authority on every governed tool call, so revocation bites on the next call. Natoma routes tool calls through a central endpoint with Cedar policy evaluation, which is the right place to enforce it, but their public docs don't describe revocation timing. Ask how long a compromised agent keeps working after you pull its access.
Does DataShield do shadow AI discovery like Natoma?
No. We don't scan endpoints for unmanaged MCP servers, and a vendor who tells you otherwise is selling you a roadmap. Natoma does agentless discovery and reports an average of 225 MCP servers per company. If you're hunting shadow agents, buy that from them or from an endpoint tool, then bring the ones that touch regulated data under a control plane that can prove what they did.
You both use Cedar. What's the difference?
Natoma says Cedar evaluates every tool call with identity and context. In DataShield, Cedar covers admin, config, and token decisions with policy_explain giving readable reasoning; the per-call dispatch path enforces a token scope ceiling, a declared authority tier, and a live revocation re-check before the handler runs. Different placement, similar intent. Ask us both to trace one denied call end to end on a screen share.
What does the Snowflake acquisition mean for a Natoma buyer?
Snowflake signed a definitive agreement to acquire Natoma, announced 27 May 2026, and plans to fold the Enterprise MCP platform into its control plane. If you're a Snowflake shop that's probably good news: fewer vendors, tighter integration. If you're not, ask about the roadmap for non-Snowflake data sources and what the contract looks like after close. We're independent and we self-host, which is the whole reason some buyers call us.
How does GDPR erasure interact with the audit trail?
DataShield crypto-shreds per-subject key material and issues an ISO 27560 consent receipt. Actor identities in the chain are HMAC-committed, so the evidence stays verifiable after the subject is gone. Natoma states GDPR and CCPA compliance and offers custom data retention at Enterprise, but doesn't document what erasing a subject does to retained tool-call logs. Ask whether erasure breaks the log.
Does DataShield have SOC 2?
Not yet, and we won't imply otherwise. Natoma is SOC2 certified, so they win that row outright. What we offer instead: Auth is live a public threat model and a verifier anyone can run, Guardian and Lighthouse have been in production since April 2026. Details on the security page.
- Natoma's positioning: "Let your AI know everything your company knows," the "Context Fabric for Enterprise AI," with 1.8m tool calls a day and HPE as a named reference. — natoma.ai, 13 Sep 2026
- Snowflake signed a definitive agreement to acquire Natoma; its Enterprise MCP platform folds into Snowflake's control plane. — Natoma blog, 27 May 2026
- Natoma describes "Cedar-powered authorization" evaluating every AI tool call with identity and context, plus device posture signals. — natoma.ai/use-cases/authorization, 13 Sep 2026
- Discovery scans find an average of 225 MCP servers per enterprise, most unknown to security teams. — Natoma blog, 31 Mar 2026
- Free tier: 5 MCP servers, 5 users, 5,000 tool calls a month. Audit logs and on-prem deployment are Enterprise-tier features. — natoma.ai/pricing, 13 Sep 2026
- Natoma launched its hosted MCP platform with a non-human identity security system for policy enforcement. — Natoma blog, 26 Mar 2025
Other head-to-heads
DataShield vs Astrix
Non-human identity discovery versus the enforcement seam underneath it.
DirectDataShield vs Aembit
Workload access brokering versus per-call authority and signed evidence.
DirectDataShield vs MintMCP
Two takes on governing MCP: the gateway, and the data behind it.
AllEvery comparison
One honest scorecard per vendor, including the rows we lose.
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