Gazzang, Inc., a provider of cloud-enabling, platform-as-a-service products, has released a new encryption and key management platform that secures organizations' big data against the threat of a breach or attack. Named the Gazzang Encryption Platform for Big Data, it protects data stored in Hadoop, Cassandra and MongoDB.
Currently, the majority of organizations that maintain big data stores do not employ adequate security measures to protect their data against unauthorized access or attacks, according to Gazzang. "Right now, everyone is relying on just a simple layer of security like a firewall," Larry Warnock, president and CEO of Gazzang, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "What we found was that organizations want to really protect it by encrypting what's being stored and analyzed so that if there ever is a breach, the data is useless." Coupled with its encryption capabilities, the Gazzang Encryption Platform for Big Data includes a robust key management system, thus isolating the key from the actual data to ensure that the "key is just as secure as the data," says Warnock.
The Gazzang Encryption Platform for Big Data boasts ease of implementation as well as a minimal lag on performance. "When you implement Gazzang, you don't make any change to your database or application that's collecting all this data. You just plug it in and it's behind the scenes," Warnock emphasizes. This ease of use is coupled with encryption that Warnock describes as extremely fast. The platform "doesn't sacrifice performance for the capture and analysis of big data," Warnock notes.
Gazzang Inc. has developed in conjunction with the big data explosion, and as the industry continues to develop, the cost of data encryption is dropping significantly, Warnock says. "If it [encryption] is really inexpensive, and it's really fast, why wouldn't you do it?" he asks. "My personal prediction is that 2 years from now, it [encryption] will be a standard ‘best practice.' " According to Gazzang, data encryption will be especially pertinent to those organizations that store data in the cloud, where data security will continue to be a top priority.
For more information, visit www.securingbigdata.com.