At the University of Liverpool, its 32,000 students and 4700 staff can sync file-share data across all of their devices; and securely share files with outsiders. Within eight days of rolling out the software, the university had 1366 new DatAnywhere users, a product from software firm Varonis Systems, Inc. Andy Williams, Systems Manager at the university, says: “We faced the challenge of users moving data online to file sharing services. In addition to the data being vulnerable offsite, concerns of document version control needed to be addressed, plus the complication that when people leave the university, it is virtually impossible to retain or even revoke access to data stored in uncontrolled repositories.”
DatAnywhere allows the Liverpool’s staff, researchers, and students to access its file storage, including personal (’home folders’) and shared departmental drives, from different locations and devices such as mobiles, tablets, and computers. Regardless of device or place, the definitive file copy always resides on the university’s file shares. With DatAnywhere in place, the university can now offer an alternative to Dropbox and has recently introduced a policy stating ‘confidential documents are not to be stored on other platforms.’
As DatAnywhere uses the university’s Active Directory permissions, Andy and his team haven’t had to take time reconfiguring, or trying to replicate, permissions outside of the existing file shares. Andy adds: “No one now has access to shared data, unless they already had it or are provisioned access. IT still retains control over who can and can’t access files, particularly those deemed confidential. We can also revoke access centrally, and it will replicate across everything at once, saving time and reducing complexity.”
DatAnywhere features the ability to share files and folders with external colleagues. A professor within the university’s Ageing and Chronic Disease Institute said: “[DatAnywhere] has proven to be an excellent resource for uploading and storing medical images, which are a central part of our EUFP7 funded clinical trials … it is essential for the proper functioning of our trial. If we didn’t have access to this, we would have to devise some other way to receive files from our collaborative centres.” With DatAnywhere, the developers add, users share large files easily without worrying about file size limits for attachments to emails, or the need to use physical media such as CDs, DVDs, or USB pen drives.
