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When it comes to data security, there are hundreds of solutions out there designed to locate and secure information. In IT, this is nothing new. However, some of those solutions have issues, such as budget draining costs, and lack of insight or tracking. One vendor proposes a unique look into resolving them, so The Tech Herald sat in on a quick overview and rough demo.
Locating the data is often the first step to protecting it.
Varonis Systems was founded in early 2005, and their business focuses on data governance. They have clients all over the world in the financial services, health care, energy, manufacturing, and technology markets. Recently, they introduced the Intelligent Data Use (IDU) Data Classification Framework. After watching a brief overview and seeing some of the framework in action, it’s a decent solution. At the same time, to be honest, not everyone will have the scale and scope to use it fully. IDU would be suited for mid-level enterprise to large enterprise operations.
IDU helps businesses deal and manage the sprawl of data on their network. Some of this information is accessed consistently by just a few people, some of it accessed occasionally by everyone, and then there are documents that just sit there. When you get into what type of information is held in those documents, that's when the headaches can start.
Data classification is tricky. Some solutions will tell you what is in a file, but not who owns it. Others will tell you the owner, and the file’s contents, but can only do so if the data is constantly scanned, and that can take ages. Sometimes, not always, you might even need to expand infrastructure to handle data classification. This expansion is costly, so it’s no surprise to see it skipped, which kills the point of data classification to begin with.
So why even bother? Data classification isn’t for everyone. Some businesses don’t have the vast amounts of documents and data on their networks to justify it. Others do, and for them, the ability to know what, where and who is helpful to manage all those pesky government regulations. If you know what kinds of data are on the network, where this data is and who can access it, you can better protect it.
Without sounding like Kool-Aid drinkers, the overview from Varonis on IDU honestly impressed us. Varonis creates a layer of information called metadata that helps data classification processes by offering context.
IDU will report on who has access to the data on your network, but goes a step further by reporting who accesses it the most, when the last time was they accessed it, and who has access to it and never touched it at all. This is a bit of a contrast from other offerings we have seen, where a report will tell us John, Sue and Gary can each access sensitive data, but not who actually touched it. This type of data can be used to monitor access, but also revoke access if needed.
To get all of the information from IDU that is available, you’ll need to create custom classification rules and use them to hunt down the various types of information you want to control.
This searching process was the most interesting aspect to the demo. IDU will scan directories of the most interest, or at the greatest risk, and using the custom rules, search these areas first. If you're curious as to what makes a directory or file higher risk than normal, it's access rights. The more access to a file, if it contains the data you are searching for, the more you can expect it to be one of the first to be scanned. This lack of linear scanning makes the process faster than average.
While IDU has its own data classification engine, it can be used with other existing solutions just as easily. The classification process pulls from Windows file systems, SharePoint, Active Directory, LDAP, NIS, and local accounts. However, while we liked what IDU offers, it’s worth repeating that not everyone can take advantage of this. You really need to have a good deal of data on the network, so the ideal focal point would be mid-level enterprise to large enterprise operations.
The cost is $8,239 USD for 100 users. More information is online here. It’s worth looking at.
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