SmiKar adds SharePoint insider-risk monitoring to Squirrel

SmiKar Software has added Burrow to its Squirrel Microsoft 365 archiving platform, giving SharePoint Online customers continuous insider-risk monitoring without a full SIEM. The add-on alerts teams to risky activity, supports investigations, and keeps audit data in the customer’s own Azure storage.

Why it matters: - SharePoint Online activity is harder to monitor as Microsoft 365 environments grow. - Burrow aims to surface risky behavior in real time instead of leaving teams to reconstruct events after an incident. - The product is positioned for organizations that want monitoring without the cost and operational overhead of a full SIEM. - SmiKar says the add-on keeps audit records in the customer’s own Azure storage, which matters for data ownership and control.

What happened: - SmiKar Software expanded its Squirrel Microsoft 365 archiving platform with Burrow, an add-on for SharePoint Online insider-risk monitoring. - Burrow is available now as part of the Squirrel platform. - The company says Burrow watches SharePoint Online activity continuously and flags behavior that looks dangerous. - SmiKar says the add-on can detect mass downloads, unusual access, and risky external sharing. - Mark Smith, founder of SmiKar Software, said Burrow is designed to spot risky activity as it happens and keep the evidence in the customer’s hands.

The details: - Burrow sends each alert to a dashboard and by email. - Alerts include a severity level, the MITRE ATT&CK technique mapped to the event, the evidence that triggered the alert, and a plain-English explanation. - Burrow uses automated checks to verify figures against source data. - The detection pipeline combines deterministic rules, behavioral comparisons with a user’s own history and peers, and an AI step that turns the facts into readable prose. - SmiKar says those layers are intended to reduce alert fatigue and filter out noise before alerts reach the team. - Burrow includes Hunt, a search tool for HR, legal and compliance teams. - Hunt lets users search by person and date range to find downloads, shares, permission changes and access events. - The search tool can help answer whether someone accessed a specific site, produce an external-sharing audit, or export a point-in-time activity history for a case. - Burrow stores audit records in the customer’s own Azure storage, with no third-party vendor holding a copy. - Burrow is delivered as a fully managed service and needs one-time, read-only consent to start. - Burrow is an add-on for Squirrel, which archives inactive SharePoint content into the customer’s own Azure storage, keeps files searchable and self-service restorable, and remains compatible with Microsoft Purview. - SmiKar’s departed-user archiving product, Chipmunk, preserves Microsoft 365 data from former employees so licenses can be reclaimed without losing information. - SmiKar was founded in 2015 and is a Microsoft Partner listed on the Azure Marketplace. - The company focuses on Microsoft 365 data management for organizations worldwide. - SmiKar serves customers across finance, healthcare, government, engineering and other sectors. - The company says Burrow follows the same data-ownership principle as its other products. - Contact: sales@smikar.com

Between the lines: - Burrow extends SmiKar’s archiving business into security monitoring, which could make the platform more useful to IT, security, legal and compliance teams at the same time. - The product’s emphasis on customer-owned storage suggests SmiKar is competing on control and privacy as much as on detection. - The use of behavioral baselines and AI-generated summaries points to an attempt to make SharePoint monitoring more usable for non-security specialists.

What's next: - SmiKar is directing interested customers to smikar.com for more information. - The company’s broader product line suggests Burrow may be one piece of a larger Microsoft 365 data-management stack rather than a standalone security tool. - Organizations evaluating Burrow will likely compare it against SIEM-based monitoring and other SharePoint security tools.