The firm, based in Edinburgh with offices in London and New York, employs 700 and manages £58 billion in wealth on behalf of clients throughout the world.

Baillie Gifford's IT environment comprises 250 servers - a mixture of both physical and virtual - containing 30TB (terabytes) of data that continues to double year on year. Of these servers, ten are identified as key file servers containing sensitive data incorporating client information and share portfolios, HR records and financial accounts.

A team of ten people, based in Edinburgh, is responsible for the day to day running, security and permission management of these servers and all its 700 employees across the organisation have access, albeit with different levels of permission.

Baillie Gifford had found that network permissions set five years ago, and those before that, were no longer valid. This raised concerns that problems may have existed within its security controls.

The company deployed Varonis' DatAdvantage system to help solve the problem of non-compliance with regulatory standards. Baillie Gifford needed to guarantee the security of all critical internal data by ensuring that access to it was limited and its removal from the firm was prohibited.