From Chaos to Control: How Aflac Uses Varonis to Safeguard Sensitive Data
"Our unstructured environment is the wild, wild west. People can create things, store things anywhere, create a folder, share it with somebody else."
Meagan Danley
Information Governance Consultant
For Meagan Danley, Information Governance Consultant, the biggest challenge wasn't a single system or a single risk — it was the sheer freedom of an unstructured data environment where people could create and store files anywhere, then share them however they liked, with no consistent oversight.
CHALLENGE
No Way to Enforce Policy in an Unstructured Environment
Danley's organization had a data retention and sensitivity policy in place for a long time, but no practical way to enforce it. Without visibility into where sensitive data actually lived across a sprawling, unstructured environment, telling people what needed to be deleted — and proving it — simply wasn't possible.
SOLUTION
Attributing Data Back to the Business and Enforcing Policy for the First Time
Varonis gave Danley's team the ability to attribute data back to the business it belonged to, making it possible to enforce the organization's existing policy for the first time. The team could finally tell people exactly what was sensitive, what needed to go, and why — backed by evidence rather than guesswork.
We're able to enforce a policy that we've had for a long time for the first time — to be able to tell people, here's what's sensitive and really has to go. Here's what it looks like should be deleted based on this.
That enforcement translated into real numbers: over fifty terabytes of data eliminated in the past year and a half, and millions of sensitive files destroyed by IT as a result.
RESULTS
Savings, Efficiency, and Confidence Across the Toolset
Beyond the storage savings, the cleanup made day-to-day work easier — people can now find what they need instead of hunting through old, outdated locations. It also gave Danley's team confidence that security standards are being held consistently across every tool the organization uses.
There was no way we'd be able to have tackled over the last three years what we have, without the visibility into all that we've had and the different people that have stepped in from Varonis and lent their knowledge and their expertise.
For Danley, that combination of visibility, enforcement, and hands-on expertise from the Varonis team has made the difference between years of unresolved risk and a program that's finally moving forward.
