Insight From Chaos: User Activity Speaks Volumes
Life used to be simple. Enterprise content was fairly manageable. It was contained inside a single solution provided by a single vendor across no more than a handful of repositories. Granting rights and permissions was straightforward because the system was integrated. Adding various workflows was pretty simple and usually quite consistent. Understanding the flow of content was relatively obvious, as it was contained. Lastly, the sheer scale of the content being managed was something a mere mortal could wrap their head around. It was the best of times.
As the amount and importance of digital content exploded, so did the infrastructure needed to manage it. Whether through corporate acquisitions, or simply the desire to bring a new tool or approach in that was better suited for emerging requirements, the landscape of the content stack has been thrown into chaos. Many organizations now have multiple content management solutions from multiple vendors. Each solution has its own approach, credentials, workflows and idiosyncrasies to keep track of. Let’s not forget the deployment models used to run these systems—from on-premises to cloud and everything in between. Trying to manage workflow, visibility, security and control across numerous repositories and approaches is quite a feat. For the teams charged with keeping this all under control, it has created mission impossible. How quickly it has turned into the worst of times.
The Challenge of Securing Content
For decades security vendors have been trying to solve the multi-faceted problem of securing organizations’ networks from the bottom up by focusing on infrastructure, rather than the user. This meant securing switches, hubs, routers, USB ports, endpoints, and more—instead of looking at intent and bad user behavior. Firewall vendors try to stop intruders by identifying and stopping suspicious network traffic from entering an environment; DLP vendors focus on ensuring sensitive information is not removed or sent outside a corporate network; endpoint security solutions target protection of individuals’ devices; and the list of security solutions goes on. Should we take a step back to see if there is a better way? Fundamentally, what are most organizations trying to protect? Well, content of course.
We can agree “content is king” but keeping up with the accessibility and security of these assets is overwhelming. On top of securing content and its flow, organizations are also being inundated with an infinite list of ever-evolving regulations triggering frequent audits around the use of this content. The resources required to manually look for answers buried in hundreds of log files,
system records, application histories, and disconnected audit records is not only time-consuming, but generates more errors and cost to an organization's bottom line. Staying on top of and reacting to these requests for information is a losing battle if enterprises continue to operate this way.
Winning the ECM Game
Companies should look for new ways to simplify access to the information stored in these distributed log files, system records, and applications. Even more importantly, user activity information needs to be gathered at the transactional level. And all of this data harvesting must be done in a way that doesn’t bring the critical flow of content to its knees, which means we can’t use the overhead-laden auditing functionality built into individual pieces of the content stack. To win this game, you have to be able to see the entire chess board—instead of “square by square” focusing on individual silos, metrics or activities.
What if we shift the view? Go top-down. Think about how powerful insight could be if obtained at the intersection of users and content:
♦ Who is accessing what?
♦ From where?
♦ What are they doing with it?
♦ What do they normally do with it?
♦ Can we spot behavioral norms—and, more importantly, anomalies?
♦ If we could spot the deviations and pair that with an ability to react, would that begin to solve a much broader problem of malicious intent?
There is a long list of questions you need to be asking about your content—and not just in security. Do you know what they are?
And far beyond that, do you know how to answer them?
Reveille gives hundreds of customers unparalleled visibility into their content services platform. These organizations immediately gain deep insight into performance, security, adoption and compliance. We empower direct action, armed by intelligence, to create smooth and incident-free operation. Learn more at reveillesoftware.com