Aveksa, a provider of enterprise Access Governance, has extended its automation solutions to include the governance and management of unstructured data, including Microsoft SharePoint and Windows file shares.

In response to increased internal and external compliance pressures, as well as a clearly heightened risk of data breaches, organisations increasingly recognise the need to extend their access governance solutions to cover not just critical applications, but critical data as well.

According to a leading analyst firm, unstructured data such as documents, spreadsheets, images and media files, accounts for 80% of enterprise data, and is growing exponentially. As evidenced by recent well-publicized data breaches, organizations are clearly struggling when it comes to governing access to critical data; there is often no easy way to understand where the data resides, who in the business has ownership of the data, and who is entitled to access the data.

“WikiLeaks demonstrated to the international community that the lack of an effective Identity and Access Management (IAM) program can contribute inappropriate access to and use of what an enterprise classifies as "sensitive information," and that access can lead to the release of that information to unauthorized parties,” wrote Earl Perkins, research Vice President in the Security and Privacy team at Gartner.

“Unfortunately, these leaks are not particularly new, and media reports describe similar breaches with disturbing frequency. However, providers and users of IAM can take several steps to lessen the likelihood that a "WikiLeaks-like" event can occur within your enterprise.”

Aveksa’s new Data Access Governance module seamlessly integrates into the Aveksa platform, providing a single, unified view of user and group entitlements, across both applications and data.

With this solution, enterprises can:
* Gain visibility of ownership and user entitlements for Windows Servers, file shares and Microsoft SharePoint sites
* Automate data access certification processes for the lines-of-business, including identification of business owners
* Remediate inappropriate access and put in place a consistent methodology for group-based access to file shares and SharePoint
* Enable a closed-loop validation process for change to data access permissions
* Determine whether access policy and control objectives are being met
* Manage data access risk and provide auditable evidence of compliance

“The introduction of our new Data Access Governance module comes as a result of direct feedback from our customers who have successfully implemented our solutions to gain better control over access to their critical applications, and now want to extend their access governance initiatives to include better control of who has access to data in the enterprise,” said Deepak Taneja, Founder and CTO of Aveksa.

“Sitting atop Aveksa’s purpose-built Access Governance automation architecture, the Data Access Governance module will enable our customers to seamlessly manage both applications and data through a single automation solution allowing them to more easily meet compliance requirements, reduce the costs of their Information Security initiatives, and strengthen their security posture.”