Varonis is working with University of Liverpool to overcome the challenge of users moving sensitive data to personal cloud-based storage.
With Varonis DatAnywhere, the university now offers its 32,000 students and 4,700 staff the flexibility to sync its file-share data across all of their devices with the added ability to securely share files with external collaborators. Within eight days of rolling out the software, the university had 1,366 new DatAnywhere users.
Andy Williams, systems manager at the University of Liverpool, said: “We faced the challenge of users moving data online to file sharing services. In addition to the data being vulnerable offsite, concerns of document version control needed to be addressed, plus the complication that when people leave the university, it is virtually impossible to retain or even revoke access to data stored in uncontrolled repositories.”
DatAnywhere allows the University of Liverpool’s staff, researchers, and students to access its file storage, including personal (“home folders”) and shared departmental drives, from different locations and devices such as mobiles, tablets, and computers. Regardless of device or location, the definitive file copy always resides on the university’s file shares. With DatAnywhere in place, the university can now offer a viable alternative to Dropbox and has recently introduced a policy stating ‘confidential documents are not to be stored on other platforms.’
“No one now has access to shared data, unless they already had it or are provisioned access. IT still retains control over who can and can’t access files, particularly those deemed confidential. We can also revoke access centrally, and it will replicate across everything at once, saving time and reducing complexity,” he said.
One of the key features of DatAnywhere is the ability to share files and folders with external colleagues. A professor within the university’s Ageing and Chronic Disease Institute said: “[DatAnywhere] has proven to be an excellent resource for uploading and storing medical images, which are a central part of our EUFP7 funded clinical trials … it is essential for the proper functioning of our trial. If we didn’t have access to this, we would have to devise some other way to receive files from our collaborative centres.”
