Solution for Windows

The Varonis Solution

Varonis^® DatAdvantage^® addresses these challenges by aggregating Active Directory user and group details, ACL information and all data access events—without requiring native OS auditing—to build a complete picture of who can and who is accessing data, and who should have their access revoked. It also leads IT to rightful data owners, so the right people can ensure appropriate access and usage. With the Varonis Data Classification Framework, IT can immediately identify folders with excessive permissions that contain quantities of sensitive data.

Why is this challenging?

Windows Permissions

On any given day, determining who has access to a folder isn't exactly easy, especially if groups on the folder's ACL contain one or more nested groups. Determining which folders a given group provides access to is downright difficult—without a program or script, an administrator has check every folder just to begin the investigation. Determining who should and should not have access to any given folder is simply impossible without automation.

Windows: Auditing Challenges

More than 95% of file access activity is not audited by IT. Why? Because native Windows auditing is so resource intensive and difficult to decipher, it is rarely enabled. The result is that IT cannot answer fundamental questions like, "Who has been accessing my folder? Who deleted my data? What data has this person accessed?"

Windows: Operational Challenges

Most permissions and group membership changes are performed manually and are untested prior to execution. Cleaning up global access groups (everyone, domain users, authenticated users, etc.) is especially difficult. Without access auditing, IT needs to make a guess as to who accesses a data set, manually effect the changes, and hope they don't get a call from an end user that can no longer access data they require to do their job.

Windows: Data Ownership Challenges

Organizational data owners should be making decisions about who gets access to their data and its proper use—not IT. Yet, 91% of organizations lack processes for determining who owns a given data set. Without a data owner that understands the sensitivity, importance, and organizational context, data cannot be managed and protected by the right people.

Windows: High Risk

It is difficult to identify excessive permissions; remediating excessive permissions without disrupting organizational processes is even more difficult. As a result, access to data is rarely revoked. Excessive permissions and the lack of an audit trail leave data at risk for loss, theft, tampering and misuse—with no way to determine what happened after the fact.