Egnyte extends governance platform API to Google and Dropbox

Egnyte today announced it has expanded its application programming interface (API) that IT teams use to centrally govern content. The Egnyte API now includes repositories provided by Dropbox and Google.

The API previously supported Microsoft Office 365, Box and other cloud platforms. The goal now is to continue extending the reach of the Egnyte platform to include additional content repositories, CEO Vineet Jain told VentureBeat.

File-sharing boom

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of file-sharing services used within many enterprises has exploded as various business units have opted to employ one platform or another with little to no input from centralized IT organizations. “Content sprawl has become a real problem,” Jain said.

Many of those same organizations are now moving to address the issue by extending governance and data security policies to those platforms as part of an effort to comply with rules such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

The challenge is that many IT organizations have not yet had the time and resources required to review how data has been managed since the pandemic began.

Taming complexity

In an ideal world, most IT organizations would prefer to standardize on a single file-sharing platform, but the ability to effectively enforce such a mandate is often limited. Various lines of business have already incorporated a range of file-sharing platforms into their workflows. Egnyte is making a case for a governance platform that will eventually enable IT teams to enforce governance policies, regardless of where data resides.

The Egnyte platform provides the ability to employ machine learning algorithms to classify and extract more than 500 types of personally identifiable information (PII). It also enables automated workflows to ensure proper handling of personal data — including responding to subject access requests — and to meet breach notification requirements within the timeframes prescribed by various legal entities. To do this, it has preconfigured compliance templates for over 50 jurisdictions around the world.

IT teams can also automatically move large files in active usage to improve performance; archive files that are infrequently used on an object-based storage platform provided by a cloud service provider; identify and permanently purge redundant, obsolete, and trivial data; and restore files and versions end users have mistakenly deleted.

Most IT organizations were challenged by data and content sprawl issues even prior to the pandemic — mainly due to the rise of a shadow IT phenomenon that resulted in individual end users and even entire departments employing cloud services that were never officially sanctioned by an IT organization. With more employees working from anywhere, usage of shadow IT services could become even more problematic in the months ahead. But there is an opportunity for centralized IT teams to regain control over those disparate content repositories in a way that doesn’t require them to impose a platform standard that other teams might fiercely resist. The truth is, a centralized IT organization’s ability to enforce its will on end users is not nearly as strong today as it once was.

In any case, many companies face challenging conversations about the compliance of the services they have employed. The path of least resistance, of course, is to find a way to enforce policies across those platforms without requiring end users to change the way they work.

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