Varonis Systems Inc., a provider of data governance software, will soon be shipping Version 5.5 of its data management and governance toolsets. The updated editions of DatAdvantage and DataPrivilege represent the latest evolution of Varonis' Meta-data Framework, which enables customers to identify sensitive unstructured and semi-structured data on their file systems, SharePoint sites and network-attached storage (NAS) devices, find areas with excessive permissions and abnormal access activity, understand who can access, who is accessing, who shouldn't have access, and who owns the data, and remediate risk faster than traditional data protection products.
The updated products help companies address the challenge of a growing deluge of data that needs to be managed, Ohad Korkus, executive vice president of engineering, CTO and co-founder of Varonis, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "If video and audio is stored on file servers, NAS devices, or SharePoint servers, it should be managed with the same consideration and directives as other valuable files," Korkus says. "It needs an owner, accurate and up to date permissions, and its use should be monitored for use adhering to organizational policy."
Varonis has extended its framework to provide visibility to the data permissions and usage on various platforms, as well as automate intelligence about excessive permissions, and enable testing or simulation of changes to these permissions. The solution also includes full execution for those permissions changes to reduce risk without disrupting critical collaboration. "Unstructured data repositories can contain numerous audio and video files," says Korkus. "While they do not necessarily contain text patterns to match against, they do have permissions and other metadata items associated with them for Varonis to enumerate, and their access activity is monitored."
Varonis has also enhanced the capabilities and interface of DataPrivilege to streamline entitlement review and approval activities for data owners, and expand the scope of what can be managed and protected. Specific features within Version 5.5 include enhanced commit functionality, enabling DatAdvantage to commit permissions changes to SharePoint and Unix/Linux monitored servers. LDAP, NIS, Local UNIX and SharePoint group memberships can be modified. Users and groups can be added or removed from SharePoint ACLs, assigned permission levels, and permission levels can be edited. For the first time, a graphical user interface is available to manage traditional UNIX ACLs and POSIX ACLs on multiple UNIX/Linux platforms. DatAdvantage and DataPrivilege Versions 5.5 will be released June 7. For more details, go here.