Good governance facilitates data privacy

Master Data Management, a supplier of Varonis Systems, has recently announced a new version of DatAdvantage for Microsoft Exchange. This latest version gives Exchange administrators increased visibility and control over their mailboxes and public folders.

According to Kerry Allemann, a data governance consultant with Master Data Management: “Legislation and standards such as the Protection of Personal Information Bill (POPI) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) require that organisations manage access to sensitive data. This solution will assist to simplify compliance with these legislations and standards.”

Data governance is the discipline supporting the management of data within an organisation. Unstructured data, such as spreadsheets or documents stored on shared file systems, make up approximately 80% of all data stored.

Explains Allemann: “Good data governance needs to manage the risk that internal staff can access and leak sensitive information such as financial results or client credit card numbers. Varonis Systems complements existing investments in technologies, such as Identify and Access Management, by providing complete visibility, through a single graphical user interface (GUI), of permissions and access to data residing in Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and shared files servers. The information gathered can be acted upon quickly and easily, ensuring that unstructured data is protected from unnecessary access.”

Varonis Metadata Framework technology, the foundation for all Varonis products, uses file system filtering to bypass the limitations of standard file system auditing capabilities and Exchange journaling and diagnostics mechanisms. The technology is uniquely able to collect and aggregate enormous amounts of metadata non-intrusively, normalise it, store it, analyse it, and present actionable information to both messaging staff and non-IT users.

To prevent unauthorised access to mailboxes and public folders, Exchange administrators need to see and understand activity patterns over the entire platform, understand ownership of the data, visualise access for all mailboxes and public folders across all the information stores, easily identify stale mailboxes and public folders, and optimise processes for consolidation and migration. Varonis DatAdvantage for Exchange automates tasks that administrators are already doing manually hundreds of times every day.

For more information about the Varonis Data Governance suite, visit http://www.masterdata.co.za/index.php/varonis-data-governance-suite.