NEW YORK, Sept. 28, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM), the first public and the fifth oldest medical school in the United States, needed better visibility into the different types of sensitive data its employees and students were storing across its file systems. Regulatory requirements necessitated that the school’s IT department regularly audit and report on who was accessing sensitive data, when and where, but they had no way of doing so efficiently.
That’s when Scott Stefan, UM SOM’s Executive Director of Information Services, discovered Varonis Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:VRNS), and its DatAdvantage and Data Classification Framework solutions. Varonis is the leading provider of software solutions for unstructured, human-generated enterprise data. UM SOM’s IT team can now easily see exactly what types of sensitive data they have, where it lives, and who has access to it all from one easy-to-use interface.
Detailed, Fast & Crucial Insight into Sensitive Company Data
In just a few days after implementing Varonis, Stefan and his team were receiving audit reports from the software that opened their eyes to the location and vulnerability of sensitive data in a way that they could never have accomplished manually.
According to Stefan, “Before Varonis, we really didn’t have any way of knowing where sensitive data was located or what type of sensitive data we had in our network. Through the Varonis Data Classification module, we are now easily able to see exactly what kind of data we have, and it has been very eye-opening… What we didn’t realize before implementing Varonis was just how much of that data we actually had stored in random locations.”
Possibility to Maintain Data Security & Transparency in the Cloud
The University of Maryland School of Medicine’s IT team was tasked with migrating a percentage of their data to the cloud, but management was uneasy at the prospect of losing control associated with moving data, particularly the huge amount of PHI and clinical data, to the cloud. Specifically, all UM SOM email data will be moved to Microsoft Office 365 in the next few months, in addition to some file data. Already having Varonis DatAdvantage played a crucial role in getting everyone at the school more comfortable with the migration of this data to the cloud, because Varonis’ compatibility with Microsoft Office 365 allows for the same DatAdvantage capabilities, such as reporting on access and being able to classify data, in the cloud.
“Because of the type of data we store as a medical school, moving to the cloud is scary for a lot of folks,” said Stefan. “Having a product like Varonis that can give us the same type of reporting on when people access files and who accessed them and where, makes having to move some of our data to Office 365 a lot easier for us to sell to all levels of the organization.”
Additional Resources
- Read the University of Maryland School of Medicine Case Study here.
- For more information on Varonis’ solution portfolio, please visit www.varonis.com.
- Join the Varonis conversation on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.
About the University of Maryland School of Medicine
The University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 and is the first public medical school in the United States and continues today as an innovative leader in accelerating innovation and discovery in medicine. The School of Medicine is the founding school of the University of Maryland and is an integral part of the 12-campus University System of Maryland. Located on the University of Maryland’s Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine works closely with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide a research-intensive, academic and clinically based education. With 43 academic departments, centers and institutes and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians and research scientists plus more than $400 million in extramural funding, the School is regarded as one of the leading biomedical research institutions in the U.S. with top-tier faculty and programs in cancer, brain science, surgery and transplantation, trauma and emergency medicine, vaccine development and human genomics, among other centers of excellence. The School is not only concerned with the health of the citizens of Maryland and the nation, but also has a global presence, with research and treatment facilities in more than 35 countries around the world.
About Varonis
Varonis is the leading provider of software solutions for unstructured, human-generated enterprise data. Varonis provides an innovative software platform that allows enterprises to map, analyze, manage and migrate their unstructured data. Varonis specializes in human-generated data, a type of unstructured data that includes an enterprise’s spreadsheets, word processing documents, presentations, audio files, video files, emails, text messages and any other data created by employees. This data often contains an enterprise’s financial information, product plans, strategic initiatives, intellectual property and numerous other forms of vital information. IT and business personnel deploy Varonis software for a variety of use cases, including data governance, data security, archiving, file synchronization, enhanced mobile data accessibility and information collaboration. As of June 30, 2015, Varonis had approximately 3,750 customers, spanning leading firms in the financial services, public, healthcare, industrial, energy & utilities, technology, consumer and retail, education and media & entertainment sectors.
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