NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwire) -- 01/29/13 -- Research conducted by Varonis, the leading provider of comprehensive data governance software, found that data security in virtualized environments is often neglected by IT organizations, with 48% either reporting or suspecting unauthorized access to files on virtualized servers. The study, conducted at VM World conferences(i), suggests that there is a limited awareness of security matters when it comes to virtualized servers, with 70% of respondents having little or no auditing in place on virtual servers.

According to Gartner, there are more than 50 million installed virtual machines (VMs) on servers.(ii) In line with this, application servers were virtualized by almost all respondents (87%), mainly due to speedier deployment (76%) and disaster recovery (74%). On the other hand, those who do not virtualize cite disk storage (37%), performance (30%) and a lack of advantages (20%) as the three main reasons for not doing so.

Across different company sizes, one area that appears to be neglected by organizations is file security. While almost 60% said they were very careful about setting permissions and controlling subsequent updates, a revealing 70%, regardless of company size, had implemented little or no auditing -- even at the high end of the enterprise space. In fact, 20% of enterprises with more than 5,000 employees admitted to having no file logging capabilities in place.

The lack of sufficient security is further highlighted by 48% either reporting or suspecting unauthorized access to files on their virtualized servers -- putting sensitive company information at risk of being misused, lost or stolen. Surprisingly, even for those who do audit all activity, a significant 68% believe there is still unauthorized access.

"We suspect that for IT departments, virtualization may be something of a black box. We have found that, after a workload is virtualized, the actual details of managing file permissions and monitoring access is considered to be automatically 'taken care of.' It is also quite possible that the teams managing virtualization projects see file security and governance as outside their discipline. The security team may have no visibility of what is happening," said David Gibson, VP of Strategy at Varonis.

The results suggest that, while virtualization has been groundbreaking in allowing IT to isolate applications and services with a few clicks, it doesn't solve permissions management and access auditing -- in fact it might make it even more complex.

"Data protection, obviously, requires the same level of vigilance in a virtual environment -- and perhaps even more so given the complexities of managing multiple operating systems on a single computing box. For organizations to stay on top of their digital assets it is vital to further IT education in this area, both in terms of training staff in understanding virtual file systems, as well as in effectively using automation to uncover security holes, monitor activity, and control permissions," said Gibson.

To download the full virtualization research report, visit http://hub.varonis.com/virtualization-report

About Varonis
Varonis is the leader in unstructured and semi-structured data governance software. Based on patented technology and a highly accurate analytics engine, Varonis solutions give organizations total visibility and control over their data, ensuring that only the right users have access to the right data at all times from all devices, all use is monitored, and abuse is flagged.

Varonis makes digital collaboration secure, effortless and efficient so that people can create and share content easily with whom they must, and organizations can be confident their content is protected and managed efficiently.

Voted one of the "Fast 50 Reader Favorites" on FastCompany.com, and winner of the SC Magazine Innovation, Product or Service of the Year, and Best Network Security Awards, Varonis has more than 4,500 installations worldwide and is headquartered in New York, with regional offices in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Varonis, the Varonis logo, DatAdvantage®, DataPrivilege® and the IDU Classification Framework® are registered trademarks of Varonis® Systems in the United States and/or other countries and Metadata Framework™, DatAnywhere™, and Data Transport Engine™ are under a registration process in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names and marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only.

(i) Survey conducted by Varonis in August 2012 at VM World Conferences in Barcelona and San Francisco with 107.

(ii) Reconsidering Heterogeneous x86 Server Virtualization, Gartner (2012)