Options, a global provider of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) products to the financial services sector, has chosen data permission and auditing solutions from Varonis to help protect its clients.
Each of Options’ clients has its own dedicated virtual NAS servers and its own file permissions. These number hundreds of servers globally, with hundreds of terabytes of data, according to the firm. Options has deployed Varonis DatAdvantage to monitor and report on them.
Options says it has over 130 financial services clients around the world and needed to reassure them that, as an outsourced IT provider, it has the right technology in place.
"Our customers needed to know that no-one was changing their file permissions or accessing files behind the scenes," said John Bryant, CTO of Options. "Clients needed to be confident that when they requested a change it was being done appropriately, that only changes the clients were sanctioning were going through on the platform and only authorised changes were being applied to the system."
Varonis DatAdvantage has a metadata framework that is able to handle a fast-growing volume of users. "Most of our customers operate within a highly-regulated environment, and needed to show their investors they have partnered with the right IT firm," Bryant said.
DatAdvantage offers a bi-directional view into the permissions structure of unstructured and semi-structured file systems, as well as an audit trail of who is accessing data and changing permissions. It also features recommendations and modelling, and data ownership identification in its framework.
Options previously relied on scripted reports. Meanwhile another advantage of the new system is the ability to perform ‘what if’ scenarios, so the support desk can assess the impact of a change before it happens, and ensure changes are correctly applied.