As businesses digitally transform to meet new challenges and provide better customer experiences, their data is still growing exponentially. This means the places data is created and processed must also grow to match and handle this growth. With all of that data being created across so many different deployment locations, the problem of data blindness threatens data security and business continuity. To protect against these threats, businesses who live on data must attain greater visibility for all of their data so that they can protect it, store it properly, and monetize it to fuel growth.
Data blindness is the inability to see what data your organization has created, how it's being stored, who is using it, and how they are using it. Nutanix created Nutanix Files™ with built-in data intelligence via rich metadata to solve the problem of data blindness. This includes metadata created that can tell administrators what type of data is being stored, the age of the data, and how it is being used or misused. This also includes contextual information such as audit trails and access patterns that can be used to discover who is accessing what data as well as rapidly spot trends and respond to threats.
Varonis Can Help Extend Visibility Across The Datacenter
Varonis Systems, Inc.’s data security platform helps provide visibility across the datacenter and edge to give administrators a comprehensive view of data, how it's being used and how to protect it better. In Nutanix Files version 3.7.1, Nutanix has partnered with Varonis to provide our rich metadata captured in Files to Varonis’ Data Security Platform and enable end-to-end visibility and protection for your unstructured data.
How It Works
The Varonis® Data Security Platform collects and analyzes the Nutanix Files metadata along with many different platforms to create a holistic data usage picture. Nutanix Files continue to create, track, and maintain metadata as usual.
The following are the main metadata flows providing the key for integration between Nutanix Files and the Varonis Data Security Platform:
- Auditing: Event collection is supported for Nutanix Files for both SMB and NFS protocols. The activity on the Nutanix Files FSVM is captured, adjusted to the Varonis event formatting. Then the events are sent to the Varonis collector via RabbitMQ.
- File system structure and permissions: The Varonis Data security platform provides visibility on the file system structure and permissions, for SMB, NFS and mixed mode structure, by crawling the Nutanix files from the Varonis Collector.
- Data classification: The Varonis Data Classification Engine (DCE) scans through all the files that fall under DCE rule’s scope to try and match data to the rule conditions. Files which have hits for a certain rule will be classified by that rule. A file might be classified by multiple rules if its content meets the relevant conditions.
Supported Varonis Platform
Varonis version 8.6 introduces support for Nutanix Files version 3.7.1 and higher for Varonis's entire platform, including DatAdvantage, DatAlert/DatAlert Analytics, DataPrivilege, Data Classification Engine, DatAnswers, Automation Engine, and Data Transport Engine. To learn more about the benefits of Varonis's supported solutions, visit the Varonis Data Security Platform page.
Final Thoughts
Data blindness is one of the biggest challenges facing administrators today, and with the rapid growth of data, the challenges will only become more significant. Nutanix Files and Varonis provide greater visibility into your data across your structured and unstructured storage infrastructure. Together these solutions help you gain control of your data, provide excellent protection from threats and bad actors, and the unparalleled ability to make the most out of your most valuable assets. To learn more, visit us at https://Nutanix.com/files
This post was authored by Mike McGhee, Director, Technical Marketing Engineering
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