Organizations Lack Control of Their Unstructured Data Assets

Varonis Systems Inc., provider of comprehensive data governance software, and the Ponemon Institute, a privacy and information management research firm, announced the availability of a new research report, Survey on the Governance of Unstructured Data, which highlights the need for organizations to control access to unstructured corporate data. Unstructured data refers to electronic information like spreadsheets, documents, presentations, multi-media file, blueprints or any data stored and accessed on file servers and Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices.

The study surveyed 870 individuals who work in IT operations and have an average of approximately 10 years of IT and business experience. According to the survey, 89 percent of survey respondents admit that controlling access to unstructured data is very challenging. In addition, nearly 70 percent feel that access to their unstructured data by employees is very often unwarranted, a situation that they are unable to rectify because they don’t have the means to monitor and control access. In fact, 84 percent of organizations say their unstructured data is accessible by people with no business need for access.

Unstructured data comprises the vast majority of digital business assets, so ensuring that access is controlled and governed by business need-to-know is imperative. The rate at which unstructured data is being created means the challenge of managing and protecting it will not only grow, but become exponentially more difficult. This is reflected by survey respondents who collectively show an exploding market need for technology and automation.

Additional key findings of the survey include:

• 91 percent of organizations lack a process for determining data ownership and 76 percent can’t determine who can access unstructured data
• 61 percent of organizations do not have a process for monitoring which users are accessing unstructured data
• 84 percent of respondents believe controlling unstructured data access will remain important or get more important within their organization in the next two years
• 77 percent of respondents note that automating the process of managing unstructured data is currently lacking, with the same percentage indicating that they would likely evaluate such a solution

"Our study exposes a serious flaw in the data security processes of many companies in that inadequate data governance may afford improper access to sensitive information by unauthorized individuals," said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute. "Research by the Ponemon Institute and other organizations consistently shows that insiders present a huge threat to data integrity; without proper governance mechanisms in place it is all but impossible to prevent these insiders from accessing information inappropriately."

It is clear that organizations invest many resources, but lack effective IT automation to protect unstructured data. The manual or outsourced processes that are being used are clearly ineffective and time-consuming. Using survey responses and related Ponemon Institute data, the Ponemon Institute estimates that in 2008, there was approximately $3.15 billion of latent demand by businesses in the United States for technology and software to protect unstructured data.

Varonis Systems sponsored this Ponemon Institute research to provide independent third-party confirmation of what Varonis has experienced in the market with Varonis DatAdvantage. Varonis DatAdvantage provides the means to control and monitor all unstructured data-use, even as the data grows and changes. Organizations can quickly determine who has access to unstructured data versus who is actually using those privileges to the data and how. Continuously updated information shows the individual users and the groups they are part of, every folder on a file server and each data access — open, delete, create and rename, for example — for every user, which enables data stewards within an organization to respond to and address all aspects of user access requests to business information without involving the IT department, infrastructure changes or business disruption.

"The findings of the survey support what we see in nearly every enterprise regardless of size or business focus," said Yaki Faitelson, chief executive officer and co-founder of Varonis. "The challenge of managing unstructured data is growing more acute, if not impossible, as the volume of unstructured data explodes. Varonis Systems has introduced the only solution that can scale to efficiently and pragmatically address unstructured data protection."