The risk of employees locating and accessing files they should not have permission to view is limiting the uptake of enterprise search, according to a new survey by Varonis Systems.

It asked 300 enterprise IT security professionals at two major security-themed industry events, and found that only 38% of IT departments have invested in or plan to invest in enterprise search capabilities for a range of reasons topped by security concerns. 

When asked to choose the biggest obstacle to enterprise search adoption, 68% cited the risk of employees locating and accessing files they should not have permission to view. 

Further, even if an enterprise search solution perfectly filters out results based on established permissions, the majority of respondents indicated they are not confident that their organization's existing permissions are accurate. 

Additional obstacles to enterprise search adoption most commonly cited were accuracy of the results (36%), end user adoption (29%) and the ability of solutions to scale enough to index all the data (24%).

Utilizing the results, the study was able to identify the features that an enterprise solution must have in order to fulfill the needs of employees, as well as gain acceptance from IT and security departments. Based on respondent feedback, the features in the ideal enterprise search solution must include:

1. The ability to not only enforce, but also improve upon current file permission information in the search filtering process
2. Index file contents quickly and also mirror changes as near to real-time as possible
3. Rank results based on learning about overall group behaviours by analysing access activity

David Gibson, VP of Marketing at Varonis, said, "Given the reliance consumers have on web search and the value we all derive from it, one might think that the power to easily find business documents would be equally compelling for enterprises. But there are clearly obstacles that past approaches have failed to overcome. 

“We knew this when we set out to build DatAnswers. By utilizing the Varonis Metadata Framework technology, DatAnswers not only applies established permissions but refines its search results to be even more effective over time as more metadata is collected. The solution understands the relationships between employees and files, and knows who is regularly accessing what content. DatAnswers provides secure results based on the organization's permissions and also identifies which permissions may be incorrect and adjusts the results accordingly."

DatAnswers,  Varonis' secure enterprise search solution for NAS, Windows file servers, and SharePoint files, was introduced in May. 

The full enterprise search study can be found at http://info.varonis.com/enterprise-search-report