100 best practices in Big Data security

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) released the new handbook from the CSA Big Data Working Group, outlining the 100 best practices in Big Data security.

The Big Data Security and Privacy Handbook: 100 Best Practices in Big Data Security and Privacy strives to detail the best practices that should be followed by any big data service provider to fortify their infrastructure.

The term Big Data refers to the massive amounts of digital information companies and governments collect about human beings and their environment. The amount of data generated is expected to double every two years from 2500 exabytes in 2012 to 40,000 exabytes in 2020. Large-scale cloud infrastructures, diversity of data sources and formats, the streaming nature of data acquisition and high-volume, inter-cloud migration all play a role in the creation of unique security vulnerabilities.

“This is an important initiative for the cloud community as new security challenges have arisen from the coupling of big data with public cloud environments. As big data expands through streaming cloud technology, traditional security mechanisms tailored to secure small-scale, static data on firewalled and semi-isolated networks are inadequate,” said J.R. Santos, Executive Vice President of Research for the CSA. “Security and privacy issues are magnified by this volume, variety and velocity of big data. This handbook serves as a comprehensive list of best practices for companies to use when securing big data.”

The handbook provides a roster of 100 best practices, ranging from typical cybersecurity measures, such as authentication and access control, to state-of-the-art cryptographic technologies. It addresses why these security measures are needed as well as how they can be implemented.