Varonis is a company that specializes in bringing data security for file access and permissions.
DatAdvantage is a product developed by Varonis to map who can access data and who actually accesses it across the entire email and file system.
Here is our list of the best Varonis alternatives:
- SolarWinds Access Rights Manager – FREE TRIAL This on-premises system acts as a front-end for Active Directory enabling unified control of multiple instances. Installs on Windows Server.
- ManageEngine ADAudit Plus – FREE TRIAL This on-premises package refers to Active Directory to track user activities and log all actions for compliance reporting. Available for Windows Server.
- ManageEngine Endpoint DLP Plus – FREE TRIAL An advanced security solution that helps organizations to safeguard sensitive information from being accessed, stolen, or lost by unauthorized parties.
- Netwrix Auditor An auditing package that assesses your system for security weaknesses and recommends improvements. Runs on Windows and Windows Server.
- STEALTHbits StealthAUDIT This package combines a credentials clean-up service with a sensitive data detection and protection system. Installs on Windows Server.
- LepideAuditor A data security system that is particularly strong at protecting databases. Runs on site as a virtual appliance.
Some of its important features and capabilities are:
- Provides a visual look into who can access sensitive and regulated information.
- Audits the touch of every single file and email, regardless of whether it is in the cloud or on-premises.
- Allows you to simulate changes in a sandbox environment before you commit changes to the live system.
- Eliminates repetitive clean-ups.
- Automates manual data protection tasks.
- Dashboards give a bird’s eye view of your risks and the progress you make to improve security.
- Provides a panoramic view of data access
- You can remove access permissions for many users with a single click
- Its Automation Engine finds and fixes inconsistent permissions.
- A unified audit trail gives you a snapshot of your security at any time.
Though these are great features, the downside is that Varonis is expensive.
The exact pricing information depends on your needs, but you can expect anywhere around $8,000 for every 100 users.
In addition, Varonis requires a lot of manual intervention unlike a few other tools that are completely automated.
For these reasons, let us look at some Competitors, Replacements and Alternatives to Varonis for access management and file/permission analysis.
Here’s the Best Varonis Alternatives & Competitors:
Let’s briefly look into each of these products to see what they offer, as well as some of their features and some screenshots of them in action.
1. SolarWinds Access Rights Manager – FREE TRIAL
Access Rights Manager from SolarWinds makes it easy to manage and audit user access rights across your entire IT infrastructure.
If you know much about SolarWinds products, you know that you can’t really go wrong with them, they have a solid reputation.
Key features of SolarWinds Access Rights Manager are:
- Monitors, analyzes and audits Active Directory and Group Policy, so you can stay on top of all changes that have been made.
- Gives a visual look of file server permissions to prevent data leaks and any unauthorized changes to sensitive files.
- Monitors and audits Microsoft Exchange to prevent data breaches. Also, helps to improve compliance by detecting unauthorized Microsoft Exchange changes.
- Displays SharePoint permissions in a tree structure for easy visibility and understanding.
- User provisioning and management is easy, as accounts can be set up within just a few minutes.
- Analyzes user access and permissions to file servers to prevent insider attacks.
- Creates reports in many templates to help with auditing and reporting.
- A web-based self-service permissions portal puts the onus of granting permissions on the owner itself.
System requirements
- CPU – Dual core processor or better
- Databases – Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP1, 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2 and 2016.
- .NET Framework – .NET 3.5 SP1 and .NET 4.5.2
- Hard drive – 30GB up to 1000 users and 40 GB for more than 1000 users.
- Memory – 4GB for up to 1000 users, 8GB for 1000 to 4000 users and 16GB for more than 4000 users.
Pricing: Starts from $2,995.
Download: Download a 30-day free trial from https://www.solarwinds.com/access-rights-manager/registration
2. ManageEngine ADAudit Plus – FREE TRIAL
ManageEngine ADAuditPlus reports Active Directory change auditing in real time and can be accessed through a web browser as well.
Features
ADAuditPlus comes with the following features including:
- Monitors, audits and reports information about critical resources like domain controllers.
- Comes with more than 200 event specific reports and instant email alerts.
- Audits the log on and log off time of workstations and the duration spent.
- Quick alerts are sent as a response to security threats.
- Tracks file creation, deletion and modification, both from authorized and unauthorized users.
- Detailed forensics is given about each folder and its activities.
- Meets the requirements of many compliance’s such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS and FISMA.
Pricing: Contact the sales team at https://www.manageengine.com/mobile/active-directory-audit/pricing.html to get a custom quote.
Download: Download a 30-day free trial from https://www.manageengine.com/mobile/active-directory-audit/download.html
3. ManageEngine Endpoint DLP Plus – FREE TRIAL
ManageEngine Endpoint DLP Plus utilizes a wide range of techniques, such as device control, encryption, and monitoring to comply with regulations and prevent data breaches.
Key Features:
- Complete data loss control across cloud and local platforms
- Offers data privacy protection
- Supports multiple backup disaster recovery options
The platform empowers administrators with the ability to create access policies for sensitive data on endpoints such as laptops and desktops, and also has the capability to encrypt sensitive data and monitor user activity to detect and prevent data breaches. Endpoint DLP also offers detailed reporting and alerts to notify administrators of any suspicious or unauthorized access attempts. Endpoint DLP is a robust solution that can aid organizations in effectively securing their data and devices.
Pros:
- Multiple deployment options across different platforms
- Compatible with both Windows and Linux platforms, making it more adaptable than other on-premise options
- Provides extensive reporting, suitable for enterprise management or managed service providers
- Integrated with more applications than most patch management solutions
Cons:
- ManageEngine is a feature-rich platform that may take some time to explore and learn thoroughly
Download: Download a 30-day free trial from https://www.manageengine.com/endpoint-dlp/download.html
4. Netwrix Auditor
Netwrix auditor gives you complete visibility and control over your IT infrastructure to protect data from unauthorized users.
Features
Features of Netwrix Auditor include:
- Detects data security threats both on-premises and in the cloud.
- Discovers and secures sensitive data by identifying certain file shares and folders.
- Quickly identifies high-risk configurations like access to “everyone” in a group or even when it is accessible to a large number of people.
- Prevents privilege abuse and data breaches.
- Provides a complete picture of user permissions in Active Directory and file servers.
- Gives a bird’s eye view of all activities in your IT environment.
- Shows permissions granted on a shared folder including its sub-folders.
- Helps to spot abnormal user behavior like unusual logons or temporary folders to reduce the chances of insider attacks.
- Sends alerts on unauthorized activity to help you prevent security breaches.
- Identifies rogue insiders and compromised accounts to make it easy for you to investigate and take the necessary action.
- Gives visibility into an application/system even if it doesn’t generate any logs.
- Offers API-enabled integrations
- A two-tiered storage helps to store your data for many years.
Pricing: There are three editions, namely,
- Small business edition for 150 or fewer AD users
- Standard edition for 150 AD users
- Data Discovery and Classification edition for more than 150 users.
Contact the sales team at https://www.netwrix.com/how_to_buy.html for pricing
Download: A free trial can be downloaded from https://www.netwrix.com/products.html
5. STEALTHbits
STEALTHbits is a scalable and automated system that maximizes security and governance.
Some Features include:
- Access Information Center (AIC) provides a workflow for resource owners to review the sensitive data located within their shared folders.
- Helps to identify and remediate old data that is no longer needed. In fact, it automates the entire process of identifying, checking and taking various remediation decisions.
- Comes with many threat models that help to identify threats such as insider attacks, ransomware and security breaches with great precision.
- Supports privileged account discovery for Unix and Linux systems as well.
- Supports and audits Office 365 Exchange Online.
- Allows authorized users to view sensitive data hits.
- Provides a streamlined management of false positives.
Pricing: STEALTHbits is offering Varonis customers a one-on-one license swap at no extra cost. For others, pricing starts at $12 per network user for Active Directory.
Download: You can download a free trial at https://www.stealthbits.com/free-trial
6. LepideAuditor
LepideAuditor is a powerful auditing and monitoring solution that provides security for your data and at the same time, makes compliance a breeze for you.
Features
Some of the features of LepideAuditor are as follows:
- Allows you to stay on top of all changes made to sensitive data by giving you information such a who changed the data and when.
- Audits systems and application even when logs are not available.
- Consolidates all audit logs in one place for easy reference.
- Reports are web-based too, which means AD users can access through them a browser too.
- You can choose a wide range of reporting templates.
- Existing reports double up as the basis for alerts, so you don’t have to set up new ones.
- A powerful filter system ensures that you get alerts only to the most important events.
- Live change updates are available
- Alerts are sent directly to your Inbox. Real-time updates are available on smartphone or tablet for app users.
- You can schedule reports to meet compliance.
- Logs are stored on a separate SQL Server for future reference.
- There are around a thousand customizable alerts.
Pricing: LepideAuditor starts at $499.
Download: A free 14-day trial is available at https://www.lepide.com/lepideauditor/download.html
Conclusion
To conclude, auditing file access and permissions is absolutely vital to prevent insider and outsider security threats, and also to remove all the possible vulnerabilities in your network.
Though Varonis is a popular software and comes with a host of features, there are some limitations to it, especially in terms of cost.
But not to worry, as there are many lower-priced alternatives that come with a great set of features as well.
We suggest you download Some of the software suites from above, as most of them offer you a 30 Day trial to test in your environment and see how they do in terms of features and how they perform for the tasks at hand.