STEALTHbits® Products Overview

Short Summary

Access Governance encompasses processes and technologies that manage access controls across IT systems to ensure legitimate access while reducing the risk of illegitimate access. Key risk outcomes include information theft, fraud through alteration of systems or data, and the subversion of IT systems (including ransomware). The topic is increasingly critical because modern cyber-attacks frequently leverage apparently legitimate credentials to bypass layered network defenses, and abnormal activity in a legitimate account is often the earliest sign of compromise.

Access Governance also supports regulatory compliance across industries with strict requirements for acquiring, storing, using, and protecting data. The expansion of privacy laws increases expectations for strong controls over Personally Identifiable Information (PII), extending Access Governance concerns beyond internal systems such as CRM to customer-facing identity environments such as Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM). A further benefit is evidencing compliance through demonstrable controls and reporting. Core Access Governance coverage includes application and information classification, Identity Lifecycle Management, Access Management, and Identity and Access Monitoring, supported by measurable indicators such as KRIs.

STEALTHbits Technologies provides a suite aimed at credential and data protection, spanning Data Access Governance, Active Directory management and security, and threat detection. Its flagship StealthAUDIT automates discovery, data and permission analysis, remediation, governance workflows, and reporting across environments including file systems, SharePoint, Office 365, cloud storage, and Active Directory. It supports least-privilege alignment, ownership assignment, periodic entitlement reviews, and self-service access requests, with sensitive-data discovery (including OCR for images) and file classification tagging. Complementary products include File Activity Monitor (with SIEM feeds), StealthDEFEND (unsupervised ML-based behavioral analytics for meaningful alerts), StealthINTERCEPT (real-time monitoring and policy enforcement without reliance on native logging), and StealthRECOVER (point-in-time rollback of Active Directory changes without downtime). Strengths center on comprehensive Microsoft AD-centric visibility and monitoring; challenges include missing segregation-of-duties analysis and role mining out of the box.

Interesting Facts

• Access Governance aims to ensure legitimate access to resources and data while managing risks of illegitimate access.
• Illegitimate access risks include information theft, fraud via alteration of systems or data, and subversion of IT systems such as through ransomware.
• External cyber-attacks often use apparently legitimate access credentials to bypass layered network defenses.
• Abnormal activity by a legitimate user account is often the first sign a cyber-attack is in progress.
• Privacy laws worldwide require stringent controls over the collection and use of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
• Access Governance can include CRM systems and may extend to Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) used by customers.
• STEALTHbits Technologies is privately held and headquartered in Hawthorne, New Jersey, USA.
• StealthAUDIT scans contents of many file types and includes OCR to scan image files.
• StealthRECOVER supports point-in-time rollback and recovery of Active Directory objects, attributes, group memberships, DNS, and account states without downtime.
• The STEALTHbits suite lacks out-of-the-box segregation-of-duties management and role mining functionality.

Notable Quotes

• “Access Governance concerns the processes and technologies for the management of access controls in IT systems.”
• “Access Governance is increasingly important to manage the cyber-risks related to organizational IT systems.”
• “Often, the first sign that a cyber-attack is in progress is abnormal activity by a legitimate user’s account.”
• “Access Governance not only ensures compliance but also provides the evidence needed to prove compliance.”
• “Understanding who has access to what is the foundation for access governance.”
• “You can only protect what you know you have.”
• “Monitoring user activity is also increasingly important.”
• “Ensuring that users entitlements match the needs of their jobs while ensure that organizational policies are met is a key capability of Access Governance.”
• “StealthAUDIT is most often leveraged for its Data Access Governance capabilities, focused on unstructured data sources.”
• “StealthINTERCEPT detects and analyses suspicious behaviours, proactively prevents changes and access, alerts, and integrates directly with the market’s leading SIEM platforms, all without any reliance on native logging.”