WeSecure helps Heemskerk save time and money

The solution designed and implemented by WeSecure, uses the powerful intelligence delivered by Varonis DatAdvantage, to save Heemskerk both time and money while improving its security position by reducing risk from potentially overexposed data.

Having had Varonis DatAdvantage installed for just four months, Heemskerk can already quickly and easily identify data that is unused and can be archived or even deleted. Fred Kroone, network and system engineer at Heemskerk explains, “With WeSecure’s invaluable assistance, we have implemented and are using DatAdvantage to determine the people who own a lot of data so we can then speak to them about their requirements. Using the [DatAdvantage] reports we can show them how much space they are using, including its cost correlation, plus how much of it is actually stale. Together we can then determine if there is a cheaper alternative than housing their data on the expensive cluster.”

Varonis DatAdvantage combines user and group information taken directly from Heemskerk’s Active Directory with the permissions metadata on their file systems and user access activity to deliver a complete picture of the organisation’s data and access control landscape. Using this intelligence, DatAdvantage can automatically highlight users and groups that are inactive, redundant, or unnecessary and highlight areas where permissions can be safely reduced. This allows Heemskerk to quickly troubleshoot problems, reduce risk, and answer questions about who can access data.

Fred adds, “Before Varonis, when users didn’t have rights to access a drive or some applications, it could take a day for us to manually search through permission structures to identify and resolve the problem. Now, when this happens, often within minutes, we know where the problem is within Active Directory in terms of user access to directories saving at least a day each time. In addition, DatAdvantage has been proven instrumental in our migration, evaluating our existing users, groups and permission structures so that redundancies and errors are remediated making the upgrade as easy as possible for all concerned.”

Heemskerk is still in the process of upgrading to Active Directory 2008 and is using DatAdvantage’s intelligence to determine the current status and identify changes that can be planned and implemented during the upgrade. Mark Vader, also a network and systems engineer for Heemskerk and the project leader for the migration of Microsoft Active Directory 2003 to Microsoft Active Directory 2008, adds, “We have a very fragmented file folder naming structure and we plan to address this during the upgrade. We couldn’t contemplate this without Varonis to show us our file folder structure, and help grant only the rightful users access to their files and newly named folders.”