Fides | Open-Source Data Governance for Privacy & AI | Ethyca
Fides The ontology for responsible data and AI
Fides establishes a universal language for governing data. It brings semantic order to fragmented systems, transforming inconsistent labels into enforceable definitions that secure AI development, analytics, and downstream data use at scale.
A universal language for governed data
Modern data environments collapse under semantic inconsistency. When the same data is labeled differently across systems, governance becomes reactive, audits become manual, and AI initiatives inherit hidden risk.
Fides resolves this fragmentation by defining a shared ontology for data categories, purposes, and use cases. It allows organizations to name data precisely, govern it consistently, and eliminate ambiguity before it propagates into models and products.
By making data legible, Fides restores operational control.
Benefits
Governance that begins at definition
Fides collapses legal intent and engineering execution into a single governance standard, removing interpretive friction and enabling compliant data operations to move at operational speed.
From regulation to executable logic
Regulatory obligations are translated into machine-readable definitions that can be enforced directly within infrastructure, without retroactive review or manual intervention.
Ship AI without semantic risk
Fides integrates into development workflows through APIs and tooling, ensuring data entering training and inference pipelines is classified, authorized, and policy-aligned by design.
Transparency over black boxes
As an open-source ontology, Fides is fully inspectable. Teams retain visibility and control over how governance logic is defined, versioned, and enforced.
Velocity with integrity
By closing the gap between definition and enforcement, Fides enables faster innovation without sacrificing compliance, trust, or accountability.
Other Features
The semantic foundation for trusted systems
- Data inventory: Apply the Fides ontology to continuously discovered data assets, maintaining a live, policy-aligned operational view.
- Consent orchestration: Use Fides definitions to drive real-time authorization and consent enforcement across systems.
- Automated DSR: Execute data subject rights workflows using consistent, ontology-backed data classification.
- AI governance automation: Ensure only semantically authorized data is used in AI training and inference pipelines.