File Activity Monitoring, Auditing and User Rights Management

Conventional approaches for managing file permissions and for file activity monitoring simply don’t work for most organizations. Third-party administrative tools and other widely used solutions, such as directory services groups and the file auditing built-in to operating systems, do not keep pace with organizational changes or the volume and growth of unstructured data.

SecureSphere File Activity Monitoring (FAM) delivers user rights management, real-time file monitoring, and access auditing for files stored on file servers and network attached storage (NAS) devices. SecureSphere identifies existing user access rights and facilitates a complete file permissions review cycle to help ensure access to sensitive data is based on a business need-to-know. SecureSphere audits all data access activity to provide visibility into who owns and is using file data. It accelerates incident response and forensic investigations with analytics, reporting and alerts on abnormal activity. Unlike native auditing solutions, SecureSphere performs file auditing by monitoring network communications, so it is able to establish an audit trail without degrading file server performance.

Control User Access Rights to Sensitive File Data

SecureSphere FAM identifies existing user access rights and facilitates a complete rights review cycle to ensure sensitive file data is accessible only by those with a business need-to-know. It streamlines audits by aggregating, consolidating and reporting on user access rights to file data across all file servers and NAS devices. SecureSphere accelerates review cycles by:

• Identifying users with access to sensitive, high-risk file data
• Highlighting users with excessive access rights
• Discovering dormant users and un-used access rights
• Providing rights review workflow capabilities

Audit all File Data Access

SecureSphere performs continuous monitoring and detailed auditing of all file operations in real-time to provide organizations with a complete audit trail that shows the 'Who, What, When, Where, and How' of each file data access. It monitors network communications and transparently records every user access of file data without impacting applications, users or file servers. SecureSphere creates a detailed audit trail that includes the name of the user, file accessed, parent folder, access operation (e.g., open, read, write, delete, etc.), access time, etc. For maximum security, the audit trail is maintained in an external, secured, and hardened repository which can be accessed exclusively through read-only views via a role based access mechanism.

Identify Owners of Files and Folders

SecureSphere FAM helps in the identification of data owners by providing visibility into the users of files and folders. The primary file and folder users are either the data owners or, as the largest data consumers, are able to immediately identify an owner. Owner identification is critical for compliance, security and IT operations because owners understand the business relevance of their data and can therefore provide critical input on how data should be managed and protected.

Quickly and efficiently document compliance, investigate and respond to incidents

SecureSphere provides interactive, on-screen audit analytics for visualizing file data activity and user rights with just a few clicks. Security, compliance and audit staff can leverage these analytics to identify trends, patterns and problems with file activity and user rights. SecureSphere reporting complements on-screen analytics and helps measure risk and document compliance with regulations such as SOX, PCI, and data privacy laws. For increased efficiency and automation, SecureSphere provides report templates and scheduling.

Alert on Abnormal Activity

SecureSphere FAM detects and alerts on access activity that deviates from corporate policy. Using a flexible framework, administrators can create policies that consider a variety of criteria, such as file meta-data (e.g., name, location, type, etc.), permissions and user access activity, and then take action when undesirable behaviors are observed. For example, an alert policy can be configured to trigger when “Marketing” users access “Financial Data”. SecureSphere alerts support a broad range of actions including sending an email to interested parties, assigning a follow-up task to an administrator, or executing an operating system command. Organizations can also establish file data security policies by blocking access with SecureSphere File Firewall.

Increase IT Operations Efficiency

SecureSphere helps IT operations staff, such as Windows, storage, help desk and directory services administrators work more efficiently. For example, because SecureSphere creates an audit record of all file access activity, data that is not being accessed can be identified and deleted or archived. Help desk staff can make faster decisions about granting access rights with SecureSphere information about data owners and effective permissions. Data ownership details and information about unused data also expedite data migrations and directory services domain consolidations. Migration and consolidation projects are also a natural time to conduct rights reviews, which User Rights Management for Files dramatically simplifies.

Deploy with Confidence

SecureSphere offers multiple deployment options, with drop-in simplicity through physical and virtual appliances, lightweight SecureSphere agents or a hybrid mix. Centrally managed, SecureSphere meets the needs of any environment – from small organizations with a single file server to large enterprises with geographically distributed data centers.

File Activity Monitoring Specifications