Riding the Data Wave with SailPoint and Dropbox

We’re excited to announce our partnership with Dropbox, as we become a key part of their ecosystem to help organizations prepare to migrate their data to the cloud and keep their content secure once there.

Many organizations have embraced the many benefits that a cloud storage provider like Dropbox can provide. But what sometimes gets forgotten is the journey to get your data ready for the cloud, and to govern it in the same secure manner as the rest of your applications and data repositories.

Data undoubtedly is the lifeblood of every organization, but at the same time it can also expose you to significant risk. Everyone talks about the growing “wave” of data, but often when you come to realize how big the wave is, it’s too late.

About 45 minutes from the Dropbox headquarters is Mavericks Beach, where you (if you get the opportunity to hang out with Kelly Slater) can surf some of the largest waves, some in excess of 60 feet  (18 meters) tall. These waves are created by huge winter storms way out in the Pacific, but they’re not visible as a typical wave in the open ocean. Rather, there’s a massive and threatening force rolling across the ocean floor towards the coast, which cannot be seen until it finally manifests as it reaches land.

Organizations today are dealing with a similar force disguised as their data. Data is stored all throughout an organization’s digital ecosystem in applications, systems, and databases but just as important data is also stored in local and cloud file shares.

Some can have millions of data files for which they have little visibility to:

• what sensitive information their data contains;

• who has access to the data;

• and what are those users doing with their access

Rather than addressing these gaps prior to migration to the cloud, the data and any affiliated issues are commonly ‘forklifted’ into the cloud. This ongoing exposure creates a perfect storm of compliance and security risk.

Through our partnership and integration with Dropbox you can ease your transition to the cloud, and incorporate an added layer of data security. As part of SailPoint’s Identity Governance platform, IdentityIQ File Access Manager gives you visibility into what sensitive data resides within your files. By discovering and classifying your data prior to migration, you can gain insight and optimize what data should be moved into Dropbox. Permission analysis also provides a clear understanding of how users can access data files. With this analysis IdentityIQ File Access Manager can proactively clean up and remediate any inappropriate access.

Empowering data owners who have the most intelligence about the data is also important to drive better governance. IdentityIQ File Access Manager leverages a crowd-sourced approach to poll the most active users, and accurately identify the rightful data owner to ensure the right users have the right access to data in Dropbox.

As companies continue to adopt cloud based storage, many will still need to manage data resources on-premises. In addition to Dropbox, IdentityIQ File Access Manager governs access across a wide range of repositories including files shares, SharePoint, NAS storage, and Exchange. Whether your data resides in Dropbox or elsewhere, it can all be governed with a consistent set of access controls.

Just as we can forecast the birth of massive waves in the Pacific, IdentityIQ File Access Manager provides visibility into your swells of sensitive data to streamline and ease your migration to Dropbox. This insight together with comprehensive access controls help ensure your migration is not just a “lift and shift” but an opportunity to identify and mitigate compliance and security gaps, as well as ensure access to your newly migrated data to Dropbox is securely governed moving forward.