Recently, STEALTHbits Technologies partnered with the Ponemon Institute to create a report on “The 2018 Study on the State of Data Access Governance”. The report highlighted and outlined the current state of Data Access Governance (DAG) in organizations, as well as the effect that it could have to reduce risk of exposure of confidential data. The findings are very interesting and I personally suggest you give it a read to compare how your organization lines up against their research.
To start, Ponemon states that “Organizations lack visibility into how users are accessing unstructured data” and “they also don’t know for certain the end users accessing the sensitive unstructured data”. Most organizations we talk to are also experiencing this exact scenario and need help achieving a least privilege access model. For those of you currently leveraging STEALTHbits, you may be using our solutions to do this today and for those of you not yet leveraging STEALTHbits solutions, this Protip shares how we can assist with granting you visibility into how users are accessing your unstructured data.
StealthAUDIT is our flagship platform that has many capabilities for governance around Active Directory, File Systems, Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL, just to name a few. For the purpose of this ProTip, we will focus on what Ponemon shared and demonstrate how StealthAUDIT provides the visibility you need.
Organizations that deploy StealthAUDIT start with understanding where high-risk permissions and open access are currently applied throughout their environment. StealthAUDIT allows you to see reporting through a dashboard that displays problem areas and high-risk assignments allowing for cleanup. Additional visibility into ‘effective access’ allows you to learn how specific individuals were able to gain privileged access through STEALTHbits’ Access Information Center.
While coupling all those access and permission reports with our activity and content scanning, it alleviates the struggle of gaining visibility into your unstructured data. StealthAUDIT scans your environment and assesses where your sensitive content resides. The enterprise scan (shown below) displays a high-level summary of where your sensitive data resides, and the Access Information Center helps track changes and activity. Using these two pieces alone, your organization can gain higher visibility and a full audit trail of changes and activity within your environment, helping to achieve compliance for GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, etc.
The Ponemon Report also shows that organizations’ confidence in safeguarding their unstructured data is low. While utilizing StealthAUDIT for reporting and activity, organizations can also choose to deploy our machine learning and UEBA product, StealthDEFEND. This product snaps right into our Data Access Governance solution and provides real-time analytics for abnormal behavior and inappropriate access. It even has built-in threat response playbooks so your organization can take action!
As you can see, STEALTHbits can really help your organization achieve full visibility into your unstructured data and inappropriate behavior. If you are now itching to try STEALTHbits’ Solutions for yourself, fill out this form or contact Sales@stealthbits.com to set up a full demo of the product to learn how we can help!
Dan is a Presales Engineer at Stealthbits – Now part of Netwrix. Prior to moving over to Presales, Dan worked as a Technical Product Manager.
Proper data security begins with a strong foundation. Find out what you're standing on with a free deep-dive into the security of your Structured and Unstructured Data, Active Directory, and Windows infrastructure.
Read more© 2022 Stealthbits Technologies, Inc.
Leave a Reply