02/11/2008

Varonis Systems Inc., the innovator and provider of comprehensive, actionable data governance software, today announced the availability of DatAdvantage version 3.5, which extends support to UNIX environments.

ebizQ received the following:

Already an award-winning solution for Windows environments and tested in more than 380 installations worldwide, Varonis DatAdvantage now provides the visibility, auditing and recommendations required to ensure unstructured UNIX-based data is accessible for appropriate business needs only. There is still one single user interface for DatAdvantage, which now shows both Windows- and UNIX-based unstructured data.

“Lack of visibility into UNIX file share data use and poor access control have been a reality since the inception of UNIX almost 40 years ago,” said Yaki Faitelson, CEO and co-founder of Varonis. “We are extremely proud to have applied our unique expertise to provide another industry-first with DatAdvantage for UNIX.”

DatAdvantage 3.5 offers the following features and benefits to its users:

Increased Data Protection – The user interface offers a single view of user/group/data relationships, including access permissions and how they were assigned.

Automated and Scalable Data Access Controls – Varonis provides accurate and adaptive data authorization by recommending who should be removed from having access to a given data set based on their usage patterns and business need.

Faster IT Operations and Helpdesk Response – By listing the names of likely business owners for any given data set, data ownership identification becomes an easy task.

Documented and Actionable Audit Trail – Varonis software delivers granular data use audit information, down to the file level. Reports can be generated for any given time interval and sent on a custom-defined schedule.

Data governance is the framework of people, permissions and processes that are employed in proper data use. Leading analyst firms estimate that 80 to 90 percent of companies' intellectual property and confidential customer data is unstructured data such as documents, CAD data, media files, blueprints, source code, spreadsheets and presentations.

“Unstructured data is the bulk of any organization’s information, growing at twice to three times the rate of database information. A good portion of this data is created in UNIX environments where rich media, engineering, software development and other similar applications are generating content at vigorous rates,” said Bill Lundell, research analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Given the criticality of this information, it is imperative that organizations find a means to control and audit access to these files.”

DatAdvantage enables organizations that have both Windows and UNIX file share data to manage and administer this data from a single user interface. It also provides visibility for any UNIX file server; gathers user data from NIS, LDAP and local machine accounts; and can collect event data from Network Appliance filers and Sun Solaris v8, v9 and v10 file servers.

Moreover, DatAdvantage gives organizations total visibility and control over their unstructured data, ensuring only the right users have access to the right data at all times. With DatAdvantage, organizations can automate control of user-to-data access by computing and recommending access privileges based on business need.

In most cases, organizations have ineffective, manual processes in place in an attempt to accomplish what DatAdvantage delivers in a few mouse clicks. In non-intrusive ways that do not impact server performance, Varonis generates: the picture of user-to-data permissions as they exist in the customer’s current environment, a thorough audit of every aspect of data use (including who accessed what and when) and recommendations to revoke users’ access to data for which they do not have a business need.

The company’s partner product, DataPrivilege, puts the responsibility and controls for data entitlement management with business owners – ensuring that only those with a warranted need can see certain files.