93% of Organizations Suffer Technical Challenges to Protect Data Despite Heavy Investment in Security Tools
January 24 2017 - 8:00AM
While data breaches destroy customer confidence, impact revenues,
attract large regulatory fines and cost C-levels their jobs, 76% of
data security professionals believe in the maturity of their data
security strategy, according to a new study. Despite heavy
investments in a variety of data security tools as part of their
strategy, 93% report persistent technical challenges in protecting
data.
“The Data Security Money Pit: Expense In Depth Hinders
Maturity,” a January 2017 study conducted by Forrester Consulting
on behalf of Varonis Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNS), a leading
provider of software solutions that protect data from insider
threats and cyberattacks, finds organizations “focused on threats
rather than their data and do not have a good handle on
understanding and controlling sensitive data.” The fragmented
approach to data security exacerbates vulnerabilities and
challenges, and 96% of these respondents believe a unified approach
would benefit them, including preventing and more quickly
responding to attempted attacks, limiting exposure and reducing
complexity and cost. The study goes on to highlight specific areas
where enterprise data security falls short:
- 62% of respondents have no idea where their most sensitive
unstructured data resides
- 66% don’t classify this data properly
- 59% don’t enforce a least privilege model for access to this
data
- 63% don’t audit use of this data and alert on abuses
David Gibson, Vice President of Strategy and Market Development
with Varonis, states, “Many point products are designed to mitigate
specific threats. If they’re used tactically, instead of supporting
a strategy that improves the overall security of data, they can not
only cost a lot of money, but also provide a false sense of
security. Ransomware, for example, exploits the same internal
deficiencies that a rogue or compromised insider might –
insufficient detective capabilities and over-subscribed access. Too
many organizations look for tools that specifically address
ransomware, but neglect to buttress core defenses that would
mitigate more than just this specific threat.”
In order to provide data visibility and controls organizations
desire, the study states, “It’s time to put a stop to expense in
depth and wrestling with cobbling together core capabilities via
disparate solutions.” Almost 90% of respondents desire a unified
data security platform. Within such a solution, 68% see the value
of data classification, analytics and reporting to help reduce
risk. Additional criteria also include meeting regulatory
compliance (76%), aggregating key management capabilities (70%) and
improving response to anomalous activity (66%). In summarizing the
findings, Forrester writes, “A platform can help to address
concerns and challenges that have sprouted from trying to make use
of many disparate tools, freeing up resources to allow for greater
focus on ensuring that firms have the correct policies, procedures
and remediation actions in place to meet business and data security
strategy objectives.”
Wade Sendall, Vice President of IT, The Boston Globe, concurs,
“Security products focus on one little piece of data security,
which costs a lot of money and requires a lot of time. We’d like to
think we don’t have any insider threats, but like anybody else, you
really don’t know until you have a unified data security platform
like Varonis to say ‘this is what’s going on.’”
Gary Hayslip, Chief Information Security Office to the City of
San Diego, states, “One of the greatest challenges a CISO faces
involves data. It is incumbent upon our team to understand not only
how our stakeholders work, conduct business and use data, but also
what applications the stakeholders require; what data is important
to them; and which data if compromised would critically impact the
ability of the organization to conduct business. Varonis gives my
teams and I insight into the flow of data throughout my 24
enterprise networks.”
The study surveyed 150 data security professionals in the U.S.
and Canada. It is available for download at
www.varonis.com/forrester-2017.
Additional Resources
- For more information on Varonis' solution portfolio,
please visit www.varonis.com
- Visit our blog, and join the conversation
on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
About Varonis
Varonis is a leading provider of software solutions that protect
data from insider threats and cyberattacks. Through an innovative
software platform, Varonis allows organizations to analyze, secure,
manage, and migrate their volumes of unstructured data. Varonis
specializes in file and email systems that store valuable
spreadsheets, word processing documents, presentations, audio and
video files, emails, and text. This rapidly growing data often
contains an enterprise's financial information, product plans,
strategic initiatives, intellectual property, and confidential
employee, customer or patient records. IT and business personnel
deploy Varonis software for a variety of use cases, including data
security, governance and compliance, user behavior analytics,
archiving, search, and file synchronization and sharing. With
offices and partners worldwide, Varonis had approximately 5,000
customers as of September 30, 2016, spanning leading firms in
financial services, healthcare, public, industrial, insurance,
energy and utilities, media and entertainment, consumer and retail,
technology and education sectors.
News Media Contact:
Jennifer LuPiba, Varonis
614-338-9889
jlupiba@varonis.com
Varonis Systems (NASDAQ:VRNS)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Varonis Systems (NASDAQ:VRNS)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024