The emphasis on record retention in light of
Sarbanes-Oxley
Data governance, a script for the people, permissions and processes that are
employed in proper data use, is listed as an area many CIOs want to explore
to solve the dicey compliance dilemma.
Looking to blaze a trail through this nascent segment of the data-management
market, Varonis Systems today rolled out the latest version of
DatAdvantage, software that controls who may access word processing
documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, and other unstructured data in an enterprise.
The software is designed to let IT departments reduce the likelihood of data
misuse and ensure appropriate permissions to sensitive company information,
said Johnnie Konstantas, vice president of marketing for Varonis.
“You have hundreds of terabytes of this data for the average enterprise
sitting on file shares and the controls to that data are fundamentally
broken,” Konstantas said. “The reason is, it’s virtually impossible for IT
to keep track of user access needs and permission to every single folder.”
DatAdvantage 2.7 lets IT administrators view current user permissions to
data, including permission types and inheritance; audit how the data is
used; and control who gets access to the data using analytics that assess
user behavior.
Konstantas said the audit capabilities
tell admins not only who accessed a file and when, but what they did with
it, including opening, deleting, modifying or renaming it.
Administrators can then trigger changes in the computer system with a mouse
click, or see the impact of changes in a “sand box,” or test bed, before
implementing the modifications.
Behind DatAdvantage is Varonis’ Intelligent Data Usage (IDU) analytics
platform, which Konstantas said employs “elegant but very sophisticated
mathematics under the covers” that allows the software to tell admins who
should be accessing data, as well as their business relationship to that
data, with roughly 99 percent accuracy.
DatAdvantage version 2.7 is available now from Varonis channel partners,
with pricing based on the number of data users. Licenses for installations
of 50 to 250 users start at $25,000. Varonis expects to roll out an upgrade
to its governance framework, DataPrivilege, in May.
New York-based Varonis’ customers include Condé Nast Publications and the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, but Varonis founder, President and CEO
Yaki Faitelson said Varonis’ customer base also includes businesses from
financial services, health care and manufacturing markets.
With 50 customers and more than 100 installations, Varonis is coming into
its own seemingly in the nick of time as unstructured data is doubling every
three months.
Moreover, while larger vendors such as IBM and EMC
are providing point products to deal with governance
issues, Varonis is a pure-play along with Securent, which specializes in
entitlements, and Agiliance, which helps customers maintain compliance with
internal policies and industry regulations.