varonis whitepaper · 3 next generation search: human generated data in the enterprise overview...

VARONIS WHITEPAPERNext Generation Enterprise Search

2Next Generation Search: Human Generated Data in the Enterprise

CONTENTS

OVERVIEW ____________________________________________________ 3

SEARCHING FOR SEARCH ________________________________________ 4

A NEW APPROACH _____________________________________________5

Better results _______________________________________________5

Faster Results ______________________________________________5

Secure Results _____________________________________________5

Convenient Results __________________________________________5


NEXT GENERATION SEARCH: HUMAN GENERATED DATA IN THE ENTERPRISEOverview

Employees create and share files and emails as part of almost every

business process—we call these files human generated data. These

files and emails are numerous, important, typically confidential, and

stored in many places in the infrastructure, like file shares, intranets,

and email. Despite its importance to the business, not much is known

about human generated data, such as who has access to it, who

uses it, to whom it belongs, or what it contains.

One of the most common problems employees face is not being able to easily find the files they are looking for when they need them. As a result, many employees turn to their email to find files they need, or store them on their local workstation. It’s hard enough for an employee to find the files they worked on recently; what’s worse is that they are unable to take advantage of the content that others worked on, or that they worked on long ago and forgot about.

How many employees recreate content over and over again that their colleagues or predecessors have already created? Even if you could find relevant content, what context would you have about who worked on it and when? How would you even know who to ask about it?

We need more insight into our data, but searching file shares and intranets – where the lion’s share of human generated data is stored—is not possible without an enterprise search engine. Answering questions about data once we find it? For that we’ll need to go beyond search.


SEARCHING FOR SEARCHOne strategy some companies have tried is to move their files into

a platform that has better search functionality. While this seems to

work for some organizations, most still end up with a lot of data

residing on traditional file shares and in SharePoint. Even legal

firms that have invested heavily in document management systems

have large amounts of data not stored in them. Why? Document

management systems just don’t provide the same easy collaboration

experience as good old file shares.

So, what are the hurdles in bringing enterprise search capabilities to file shares? The first hurdle to cross is price. Enterprise search engines can be costly, especially when indexing large amounts of data.

Speaking of indexing all that data, this brings us to our second hurdle. It can take a lot of time, bandwidth and processing to index the huge amounts of data stored on file shares and in SharePoint. Indexing must be as efficient as possible. What makes it tough for search engines to be efficient, however, is they have no knowledge of what data is created or changing day to day without first interrogating the entire file system. Traditional search engines simply don’t have an audit trail of activity that tells them which files and folders they need to index.

The third hurdle usually presents itself during a proof of concept, when the organization discovers how much critical data it has that is accessible to too many people. Many search projects are halted before they are deployed when management discovers a search of the word “payroll” by an average employee reveals dozens of sensitive files that need to be restricted. They ask themselves, “What other important data do we need to lock down before we can enable search without putting ourselves at risk?”

Assuming the first three hurdles have been crossed, the last hurdle is in the quality of the results and how employees can make use of them. As many organizations have discovered, finding content is often just the beginning—then more questions arise about who worked on it and who shared it with whom. Being able to connect with the other people that have insights into the content you’ve found can make the difference between being able to make use of it or not.

Many organizations have yet to cross any of the first three hurdles, let alone all three. So, employees are left with their desktop search, their memory, or asking their colleagues, “Do you have a copy of that file we worked on last year when…?”

What’s needed is a technology that can deliver the productivity gains of search at the right price point, efficiently index large amounts of data at scale without introducing risks (even if permissions are in some places excessive), and then provide context about the content it finds. For the first time, such a solution has been created.


A NEW APPROACHVaronis DatAnswers provides efficient, secure search functionality for human generated content residing in file shares and SharePoint, at an attractive price and with minimal infrastructure requirements.

BETTER RESULTS

DatAnswers makes use of DatAdvantage metadata, like actual access activity, to determine which files are most likely relevant to the searcher. Varonis is the first technology to combine actual access activity with indexing technology to determine search relevance for enterprise file shares and SharePoint.

FASTER RESULTS

DatAnswers makes use of the same true incremental scanning technology used by the Varonis IDU Classification Framework, where only files that are created or modified (as per the DatAdvantage audit log) after the initial scan are rescanned. Also, like the IDU Classification Framework, DatAnswers index scope can be dynamically defined based on ownership and activity.

SECURE RESULTS

So that sensitive files are not exposed to the wrong people – even if their permissions are incorrectly configured -- DatAnswers leverages DatAdvantage patented recommendations and map of file system permissions to automatically prune results, omitting files a user should not have access to. Additionally, DatAnswers can be configured to exclude results that the Varonis IDU Classification Framework has determined contain sensitive data, such as credit card information or other personal identifiers.

CONVENIENT RESULTS

If you search for something once, you are likely to search for it again. DatAnswers lets you save and share search queries—especially handy for complex search parameters. DatAnswers will not only help end users find what they’re looking for, it will also help them find data they don’t even know they’re looking for.


VARONIS PRODUCTSVARONIS DATA GOVERNANCE SUITE

Varonis provides a complete metadata framework and integrated product suite for governing unstructured data on file servers, NAS devices and (semi-structured) SharePoint and Exchange servers. Varonis DatAdvantage, DataPrivilege, and the IDU Classification Framework provide organizations the ability to effectively manage business data through actionable intelligence, automation of complex IT tasks, and sophisticated workflow management.

• Varonis DatAdvantage for Windows

• Varonis DatAdvantage for UNIX/Linux

• Varonis DatAdvantage for SharePoint

• Varonis DatAdvantage for Exchange

• Varonis DatAdvantage for Directory Services

• Varonis DataPrivilege

• Varonis IDU Classification Framework

• Varonis DatAlert

VARONIS DATAPRIVILEGE

DataPrivilege automates data governance by providing a framework for users and data owners to be directly involved in the access review and authorization workflows. A configurable web interface for data owners, business users, and IT administrators automates data access requests, owner and IT authorization of changes, automated entitlement reviews, and business data policy automation (e.g. ethical walls). A complete audit trail ensures that data governance policies are in place and being adhered to.

VARONIS IDU CLASSIFICATION FRAMEWORK

The Varonis IDU Classification Framework gives organizations visibility into the content of data, providing intelligence on where sensitive data resides across its file systems. By integrating file classification information—from either the included classification engine or from a third-party classification product—alongside the rest of the Varonis metadata in the DatAdvantage interface, the IDU Classification Framework enables actionable intelligence for data governance, including a prioritized report of those folders with the most exposed permissions AND containing the most sensitive data.

VARONIS DATALERT

In our survey, Red Alert: A Data Breach Report(www.varonis.com/research), 70% of companies reported that they find out about breaches through their customers and third parties instead of their own IT departments. Improve your ability to detect possible security breaches, misconfigurations, and other issues with Varonis DatAlert. Varonis DatAlert extends Varonis DatAdvantage products and the IDU Classification Framework with real time alerting based on file activity, Active Directory changes, permissions changes, and other events. Alert criteria and output are easily configurable so that the right people and systems can be notified about the right things, at the right times in the right ways.


WORLDWIDE HEADQUARTERS

1250 Broadway, 31st Floor, New York, NY 10001 T 877 292 8767 E [email protected] W www.varonis.com

UNITED KINGDOM AND IRELAND

Varonis UK Ltd., Warnford Court, 29 Throgmorton Street, London, UK EC2N 2AT T +44 0207 947 4160 E [email protected] W www.varonis.com

WESTERN EUROPE

Varonis France SAS 4, rue Villaret de Joyeuse, 75017 Paris, France T +33 184 88 56 00 E [email protected] W sites.varonis.com/fr

GERMANY, AUSTRIA AND SWITZERLAND

Varonis Deutschland GmbH, Welserstrasse 88, 90489 Nürnberg T +49 (0) 911 8937 1111 E [email protected] W sites.varonis.com/de

VARONIS DATA TRANSPORT ENGINE

With an intelligent rules engine and scheduling mechanism, the Varonis Data Transport Engine (DTE) allows IT personnel to set dynamic criteria to identify the data that should be moved or deleted, where it should end up, when it should be moved, whether the permissions should remain effectively the same or be changed (for the better), and then executes the migration or disposition automatically—end to end. The Varonis Data Transport Engine automates all the heavy lifting: copying data and metadata while adhering to maintenance windows and other scheduling constraints, automatically synchronizing source and destination with incremental copies even if the source data is still “live,” translating permissions across platforms and domains, and reporting on progress every step of the way.

VARONIS DATANYWHERE

Varonis DatAnywhere extends the corporate infrastructure so that remote employees can access traditional LAN resources with the same robust experience provided by cloud-based file synchronization services. With DatAnywhere, employees enjoy multiple capabilities:

• Automatically and securely sync files from corporate file shares to and from their laptops, smartphones and tablets

• Authenticate with corporate directory services (e.g. Active Directory)

• Securely share files with other employees and external business partners

ABOUT VARONISVaronis 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

varonis whitepaper · 3 next generation search: human generated data in the enterprise overview...

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