Native Hadoop security tools are not enough

While an overwhelming majority of Hadoop users agree that data security is a critical requirement, most disagree or are not sure that its native security tools provide enough protection for their sensitive data.

Protegrity surveyed nearly 150 attendees at last month’s Strata + Hadoop World Summit on their use of the Hadoop platform for Big Data projects. When asked whether data security is a critical requirement for their Hadoop data lake or hub, 86 percent said that it was. However, when asked whether native Hadoop security was enough to protect their data, only 11 percent said it met their data security needs.

“When 89 percent of the Big Data professionals we surveyed disagree or are not sure that security tools native to Hadoop provide enough protection for their sensitive data, it demonstrates a tremendous need for increased education around Big Data security and the availability of more robust data security solutions for Hadoop,” said Protegrity CEO Suni Munshani.

Indeed, 80 percent of those surveyed indicated that their organizations are using Hadoop in production environments. Supporting the growing hype around Hadoop, the survey also revealed that 80 percent of respondents said their organizations will be spending more on Hadoop-related projects this year.

“Enterprises are storing and processing data across many execution engines at a scale that has not been possible before. This in turn has made security a crucial component of enterprise Hadoop,” said Munshani. “Given how those surveyed said that production deployments and spending on Hadoop Big Data projects are increasing, responsible organizations are looking to apply enterprise-grade security to their highly sensitive data in Hadoop to meet corporate risk management standards, privacy policies and complex compliance and regulatory requirements.”