Varonis Integration with Clustered Data Ontap 8.2

Varonis Systems Inc. announced compatibility with NetApp, Inc.‘s clustered Data ONTAP 8.2, bringing a range of capabilities in accessibility, governance, and retention to NetApp storage systems.

"Hundreds of organisations around the world depend on Varonis technology for their high-performance NetApp storage systems," said David Gibson, Varonis VP. "Clustered Data ONTAP is a premier storage platform for human-generated data – the word files, presentations, spreadsheets, images, videos, audio files and emails that contain an organisation’s product ideas, financial forecasts, business plans, and other sensitive content. Human-generated, unstructured data is growing rapidly and is at the heart of both digital collaboration and big data, and Varonis provides a unique metadata layer that solves urgent needs in its governance, access and retention, which modern organisations absolutely require."

The importance of monitoring and protecting human-generated data is reinforced by the reliability, scalability and redundancy that NetApp has built into the new release of clustered Data ONTAP.

"Reliable and transparent data governance solutions are essential for enterprise storage systems," said Tim Russell, VP, data lifecycle ecosystem group, NetApp. "Working with technology partners like Varonis, we’re able to offer a way for customers to get the most out of their storage investments by analysing usage, aligning data with business units and data owners, identifying where data is at risk, and enabling its safe remediation."

Lee Gitzes, pre-sales enterprise architect, Comm Solutions Company, a systems integrator that offers both Varonis and NetApp solutions, said: "The explosive growth of unstructured data is being fueled by the need for users to access it from multiple places through a variety of devices. Naturally, that data often has sensitive business, legal or privacy attributes, so the risks grow as volume and access multiply. As NetApp’s new version of clustered Data ONTAP improves availability for users and provides agility for IT, the role of Varonis’ solutions for these environments takes on even greater importance. Varonis provides organisations with the ability to understand where the data is, who has access to it, whether that access is meeting compliance regulations, and whether their businesses are being compromised or threatened."

The Varonis Metadata Framework non-intrusively collects critical metadata, generates metadata where existing metadata is lacking (e.g. its file system filters and content inspection technologies), pre-processes it, normalises it, analyses it, stores it, and presents it to IT administrators in an interactive, dynamic interface. Once data owners are identified, they are empowered to make informed authorisation and permissions maintenance decisions through a web-based interface – that are then executed – with no IT overhead or manual backend processes. Varonis DatAnywhere extends the corporate infrastructure so that remote employees can access traditional LAN resources with the same experience provided by cloud-based file synchronisation services, including file synchronisation, mobile access, and secure 3rd party sharing.

Gibson continued: "Organisations of all sizes and types must not only control who can access their data but, critically, audit who is actually using that access if they’re to remain compliant with data governance requirements. Another driver is the introduction of collaborative capabilities, enabling secure private cloud access to those storage repositories. Equally, migrating data between storage facilities, and even devices, is another area where knowing what you need to manage is critical. Retention policies are extremely difficult to adhere to unless an organisation maintains control, visibility, and the ability to enforce these rules regardless of where data resides."

About Metadata Framework
Four types of metadata are critical for data governance:

• User and Group Information – from Active Directory, LDAP, NIS, SharePoint, etc.
• Permissions and File System Information – knowing who can access what data in which containers
  Access Activity – knowing which users do access what data, when and what they’ve done
• Sensitive Content Indicators – knowing which files contain items of sensitivity and importance, and where they reside The Varonis Metadata Framework non-intrusively collects this critical metadata, generates metadata where existing metadata is lacking (e.g. its file system filters and content inspection technologies), pre-processes it, normalises it, analyses it, stores it, and presents it to IT administrators in an interactive, dynamic interface.