BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Sep 4, 2013) - Varonis Systems, Inc., the leading provider of comprehensive data governance software, today released details of how it has helped Boston University bolster its data loss prevention (DLP) strategy and address its data governance concerns. Having initially investigated traditional DLP technologies, this leading university found that the majority of the solutions could only answer one aspect of DLP -- where sensitive data was located -- but could not determine who had access to it or who was using it. As the only solution able to provide deeper insight to the data, Varonis DatAdvantage and the Varonis IDU Classification Framework are now enabling Boston University to better ensure that sensitive data is only accessible to authorized users, while also providing extensive audit trails that detail how the data is being used.
Quinn Shamblin, Executive Director and Information Security Officer for Boston University, explains, "Data loss prevention is primarily concerned with ensuring that the right person has access to information, while preventing the wrong person from doing so. All the DLP technologies that we looked at, with the exception of one, could only tell me where sensitive data was; they couldn't tell me who had access to it or who was using it. Knowing the location of sensitive data without knowing who has access to it is almost irrelevant. Varonis offered a very strong combination of features and capabilities without having to go to multiple products and incur multiple licensing fees. And it does what I need it to do, help us be even more effective in dealing with the challenge of data loss prevention."
Varonis DatAdvantage aggregates Active Directory user and group details, ACL information and all data access events -- without requiring native OS auditing -- which means Boston University can answer one element of DLP by building a complete picture of who can and who is accessing data. By monitoring these file touches, the intelligence leads Quinn's team to the rightful data owners, who can then be involved in making sure the right people have appropriate access and usage. Varonis' IDU Classification Framework provides the other piece of the puzzle, the ability to accurately identify files that contain sensitive information, allowing IT to immediately identify folders with excessive permissions that contain quantities of sensitive data, for remediation.
An additional benefit from the solution, as Quinn explains, is that Varonis DatAdvantage is able to answer a question that has challenged the university for many years. "Because of what it does, recording all file access events, it can answer the core question the audit group are always asking: who has access to and who accessed what. For example, say Bill Smith was to leave the university -- we need to know what Bill has access to. Without a centralized solution, we had to work with each individual system administrator across all the different schools and departments across both campuses, getting them to manually review their systems to document Bill's permissions. Varonis DatAdvantage does this for us with a canned report. That's just one use and there are many other ways we hope it will revolutionize our processes. Varonis has value not just for my team but also the system administrators and auditors within the organisation."