Big Data is about collecting massive volumes of information from a variety of sources and analyzing the data in real-time.

The content gathered in these databases may seem harmless at first, but as the volume, velocity and variety of unstructured data skyrockets, sensitive information is ultimately stored. Email addresses, phone records, social security numbers, health records, and intellectual property. Forrester Research calls this "toxic data." It's information that, if it leaves the organizations control, could be devastating.

Organizations that fail to encrypt data leave themselves exposed to attacks and fines. Companies like Stratfor, Sony and Epsilon - who failed to encrypt toxic data - all took severe hits to their brand and combined to lose billions of dollars in revenue.

But worse still is these companies all lost the trust of their customers. People will shy away from organizations that aren't trusted stewards of their information. This includes the history of their data, application and web use.

Retroactively trying to protect this data is far more difficult than securing it at the outset. Check out our Securing Big Data white paper to learn more and catch the next video on security considerations for Big Data.

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Securing Big Data: What Every Organization Should Know

The need for security and privacy of enterprise data is not a new concept, but the evolution of big data changes the game in many ways. For starters, most of the NoSQL data stores in use today do not have sufficient mechanisms to secure big data. This white paper outlines some of the challenges associated with securing big data and offers tips for protecting your most important business asset.

Thank you for downloading our Securing Big Data white paper. Please click here to retrieve your download.

We’ve been talking a lot this week about securing big data. It’s an important subject, and you’re going to be hearing a lot more from us about it.

But today, I want to take a look at what else is making news in the world of security. Let’s get to the headlines:

SC Magazine - Exclusive: How Sony is Fighting Back
April 2011 was a difficult and costly month to say the least for Sony’s PlayStation Network. This is well-covered territory by now. It’s good to see Sony battling back by bringing in a former U.S. counter-intelligence officer to run their security operations. Brett Wahlin knows he’s in for a different kind of fight this time around, batting ‘Anonymous’, which operates very differently from state-sponsored groups.

Mobiledia - Hackers Speak out at SXSW
And speaking of ‘Anonymous’, a few members of the group were on hand at SXSW this week for the premiere of the documentary, “We are Legion”. Unfortunately, none of them bothered to stop by our GazzangBang last week.

Today - The Lost Cell Phone Project
Symantec conducted an elaborate social experiment to find out what happens when someone finds a lost cell phone. Would folks try to track down the owner or rummage through the data and apps? I guess I’m more disappointed than surprised by the results. A few takeaways from this story:

1. Password protect your phone. Even if you don’t use it for work, your address book alone contains enough sensitive data about you and your acquaintances to do serious damage.
2. Encrypt your most sensitive data and applications. Password protection only goes so far. It’s more a nuisance to hackers than a deterrent.
3. Move to Ottawa. People are apparently far less nosy there.

The Register - IDC Big Data: Big Biz Worth $16.9 billion by 2015
OK, you didn’t think I’d go an entire column without mentioning big data, did you? This article lends further credence to the belief that the big data market is real, it’s growing and it’s not going away anytime soon.

“When you look at the servers, storage, networks, software, and services that comprise this big data market as defined by IDC, you get a market that was worth $3.2bn in 2010 and that is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 39.4 per cent over five years to hit $16.9bn by 2015. That growth rate, says IDC, is seven times higher than that of the overall IT market over the same five-year span.”

This data needs protecting in motion or at rest. You can read a lot more on this topic at www.securingbigdata.com

Huffington Post - And the most commonly used password is…
This may be the least shocking piece of information you’ll read this year. This story simply shows that most people do the absolute minimum when it comes to meeting security requirements for passwords. As someone who works in marketing for an IT company, this story just makes me shake my head.

As someone who works in marketing for an IT security company, this story makes me want to ram my head through my monitor. If only there were a video that parodies how silly some people’s passwords are…

Oh wait, there is. Check it out.

When Forbes is talking about big data, you know it’s big business, and there's big money involved. Haydn Shaughnessy does a nice job of highlighting a few big data use cases. But what is neither covered in this Forbes article nor in most columns written about big data today, is what companies are doing to secure big data.

Haydn writes, “The big data story we often hear about goes like this: having almost infinite data about customers’ online habits and practices opens up the possibility of much more accurate inferences about their actual desires.”

OK, so if big data is collecting information about customers' online habits and practices, that's information that absolutely must be kept secure. Imagine being the company that loses control over not just anonymized clickstreams, but user's IP addresses, browsing history and travel patterns. It's would be a frightening - not to mention costly - reality.

Big data is booming. There's no doubt about it. But it's also big business for hackers. There's a lot of buzz about big data. Who will benefit? What new insights will we extract? We think it's time to start asking, "Who's going to protect big data?"

To see what Gazzang is doing about it, check out www.securingbigdata.com.

We’re at this unique juncture where technology that’s available to us has actually caught up with the rising flood of data being created. Open Source databases like Hadoop, Cassandra, MongoDB and others allow us to harness the exabytes of unstructured information captured from mobile devices, social media, log files, emails, images and video, and use it to perform real-time analytics.

This is Big Data, and it’s yielding big results for companies like Visa, Netflix and Google’s Motorola Mobile.

There’s a lot of noise about Big Data management and analytics tools, but there’s a frightening lack of concern about one area that requires far more attention. We believe that before companies even consider a Big Data project, they need to look at how they’re going to secure big data.

Big Data is about collecting massive volumes of information from a variety of sources and analyzing the data in real-time. The content may seem harmless at first, but as the volume, velocity and variety of unstructured data skyrockets, sensitive information like email addresses, phone records, social security numbers, health records, and intellectual property are ultimately captured and stored. Forrester Research calls this "toxic data". It is information that, if it leaves the organizations control, could be devastating – could be absolutely “toxic”.

Organizations that fail to protect and encrypt this data leave themselves exposed to attacks and possibly even fines. Companies like Stratfor, Sony and Epsilon - who failed to encrypt toxic data - all took severe hits to their brand and combined lost millions of dollars in potential revenue. But worse still, is these companies all lost the trust of their customers. How do you put a price on that? People will shy away from organizations that aren't trusted stewards of their information. This includes not only the data itself but the histories of their data, application and web usage.

Retroactively trying to protect this data is far more difficult than securing it at the outset. Organizations must consider this BEFORE it is too late.

That's where Gazzang comes in. Our cloud-based encryption and key management platform helps customers protect Big Data.

It is time to think about securing Big Data. Don’t let the loss of your valuable information become front-page news. Please read our Securing Big Data white paper to learn more.