Varonis Systems, the leading provider of comprehensive data governance software, today announced that its DatAdvantage solution has been adopted by one of the leading Financial Services and Asset Management organisations in the United Kingdom.
Founded over 100 years ago, Baillie Gifford is an independent investment management firm based in Edinburgh, Scotland with offices in London, England and New York City, USA. With just under 700 staff, the firm manages more than £58 billion (US$87 billion) in active equity and bond portfolios for its clients in the UK and throughout the world.
Baillie Gifford has been operating for over 100 years and since its inception over 20 years ago the Information Systems department has grown organically with the firm. However, increasingly it was discovering that network permissions set five years ago, let alone before that, were no longer valid. This raised concerns that problems may exist within its security controls.
Baillie Gifford selected Varonis DatAdvantage since it was the only solution that addressed all their data access challenges, especially in terms of meeting and proving regulatory compliance. Not only is DatAdvantage easy to install and maintain, but its intuitive user interface and comprehensive, easy to understand reports made adoption and continued use quick and simple.
With the security and integrity of its client information paramount, Baillie Gifford needed to guarantee the security of all critical internal data by ensuring that access to it was limited and its removal from the firm was prohibited. Operating globally within a heavily regulated industry, Baillie Gifford's compliance landscape is further complicated in that it has to adhere to legislation in a number of jurisdictions, sometimes with competing and contradicting requirements. The company turned to Varonis® in order to simplify and automate the compliance processes across this complex regulatory landscape.
Baillie Gifford selected DatAdvantage since it was the only solution that addressed all their data access challenges, especially in terms of meeting and proving regulatory compliance. Colin Lennox, Technical Services Manager Baillie Gifford said: "DatAdvantage was the only solution that I believed covered all our requirements for data access and permissions auditing, plus the reports it produces even a layperson could quite easily pick up, interpret and action. Plus, the inbuilt 'traffic light' scheme clearly identifies excessive permissions and we quickly pinpointed areas that needed to be tightened."
The security management improvements the solution provides to the organisation were evident during the evaluation period so the investment was easily justified and approved by Baillie Gifford's internal risk committee. Working in partnership with Varonis® Technical staff, the deployment of the system was trouble free, within a month DatAdvantage® had been rolled out across the whole firm.
Lennox said: " DatAdvantage® has enabled us to remove the risks associated with data permission changes within our IT environment. Employees with responsibility for sensitive and critical data now have confidence that there are no security exposures. As an organisation, we can prove to our regulators that our IT controls are stringent and that we are providing effective protection around our data."
David Gibson, technical director, Varonis® said: "It is always a pleasure to work with one of the best-known international names in asset management and finance such as Baillie Gifford. They are a blue chip company which has to ensure that its financial information is safe and secure and I am truly delighted that Baillie Gifford has chosen DatAdvantage® to safeguard the integrity of its data. We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial working relationship."
Based on a Microsoft Windows operating system, Baillie Gifford's IT environment comprises 250 servers - a mixture of both physical and virtual, containing 30TB of data that continues to double year on year. Of these 250 servers, ten are identified as key file servers containing sensitive data that must be protected at all costs, incorporating client information and share portfolios, HR records and financial accounts. A team of ten people, based in Edinburgh, is responsible for the day to day running, security and permission management of these servers and all its 700 employees across the organisation have access, albeit with different levels of permission.
Data governance solutions like DatAdvantage and metadata frameworks such as the Varonis Metadata Framework are a cost-effective way for organizations to better manage and protect their unstructured data by providing actionable intelligence on access controls, content, and access activity. Organizations can employ this metadata information to support IT initiatives such as entitlement reviews, compliance audits, data ownership identification, records management, domain and data migrations, consolidations, archiving and retention projects.