NEW YORK, May 13, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Varonis Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:VRNS), the leading provider of software solutions for unstructured enterprise data, has been cited in a new report by Forrester Research as a "data-centric vendor [that] can capture activity information on login access and data access."
The report, entitled "Wake-Up Call: Poorly Managed Employee Access Rights Are a Breach Waiting to Happen," states, "In their quest to maximize employee productivity, firms are exposing themselves to unnecessary risks and increasing their chances of a data breach by using outdated approaches to verify employee access . . . Security and risk (S&R) professionals must enhance existing access governance processes with data and complementary technologies to deliver better risk insight and intelligence." The report was published April 28, 2015 and authored by Forrester analyst Merritt Maxim.
Forrester is one of the most influential IT research and advisory firms in the world. The new report "provides practical guidance that S&R pros can use to gain better visibility over identities and entitlements to mitigate risk while empowering employees." Varonis is listed in the report for its ability to capture activity information on login access and data access, such as whether a user read or deleted a given file. Varonis believes that this insight is critical in identifying unnecessary and excessive access privileges.
According to the Forrester report, "Many of the highest-profile data breaches of the past 18 months … have involved compromised identities of individuals authorized to access some part of a business' computing environment." The report goes on to say that "Usage and event data can provide important intelligence to help further understand potential risks and empower [security and risk professionals] to take the appropriate remediation to mitigate that risk."
Varonis believes Forrester's conclusions are consistent with findings from a survey conducted for Varonis by The Ponemon Institute in late 2014. That study found 71 percent of employees reported that they have access to data they should not see, and more than half said this access is frequent or very frequent.
The Forrester report lists several reasons for these excessive employee entitlements:
- "The sheer volume of sensitive data that employees can access is forever increasing . . . Declining storage costs have led some businesses to mistakenly store and retain more data than necessary."
- "Most security teams follow inconsistent procedures for conducting access reviews."
- "Employees accumulate unnecessary access to sensitive data during their tenure . . . because of job changes, special projects and reorganizations."
David Gibson, Varonis Vice President, said, "There has been so much focus and investment on protecting the perimeter, but the most fundamental building blocks of security that protect the data from inside – need-to-know access and activity monitoring – are often left behind. Unnecessary access can lead to disaster in several ways. Varonis is helping thousands of organizations around the world address these challenges by empowering them with a window into their file and email environments and valuable insight into who has access to what data, who should have access to it and how it is being used."
For more information on the Varonis solution portfolio, please visit www.varonis.com and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
About Varonis
Varonis is the leading provider of software solutions for unstructured, human-generated enterprise data. Varonis provides an innovative software platform that allows enterprises to map, analyze, manage and migrate their unstructured data. Varonis specializes in human-generated data, a type of unstructured data that includes an enterprise's spreadsheets, word processing documents, presentations, audio files, video files, emails, text messages and any other data created by employees. This data often contains an enterprise's financial information, product plans, strategic initiatives, intellectual property and numerous other forms of vital information. IT and business personnel deploy Varonis software for a variety of use cases, including data governance, data security, archiving, file synchronization, enhanced mobile data accessibility and information collaboration. As of March 31, 2015, Varonis had approximately 3,500 customers, spanning leading firms in the financial services, public, healthcare, industrial, energy & utilities, technology, consumer and retail, education and media & entertainment sectors.