Whitepaper Brief: Big Data, Big Risks

Whitepaper Brief: Big Data, Big Risks

Executive Summary:

Big data initiatives are heating up. From financial services and government to healthcare, retail, and manufacturing, organizations across nearly every vertical market are investing in new big data technologies to improve the quality and speed of decision making and to enable better planning, forecasting, marketing, and customer service.

Research firm IDC predicts that the big data technology and services market is expected to increase worldwide to $16.9 billion in 2015 from $3.2 billion in 2010 — a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40 percent.

Not surprisingly, CIOs lead support for big data initiatives — and view the technology’s business intelligence and analytics capabilities as a way to extract business value and achieve greater ROI from the vast amount of data that organizations now amass. The CIO Magazine “2012 Big Data Survey,” reveals that nearly half (47 percent) of respondents report backing from the CEO; meanwhile a majority of companies (65 percent) have either deployed big data projects or expect to eventually do so.

Yet big data security typically falls way below the radar even though security ranks #10 on the list of big data challenges, according to 30 percent of respondents to the CIO Magazine study.

New big data technologies allow organizations to collect, manage, and analyze incredibly large data sets to gain business insights. As these systems become more common, the repositories are increasingly likely to contain sensitive data such as confidential financial or personal information. Only after companies find themselves reliant on big data do they ask how to secure it. The big challenge is to reap the business benefits of big data without compromising data security or violating privacy and regulatory compliance requirements.

“Many organizations are still trying to determine how to implement big data environments. It’s a classic situation where security is often an afterthought,” says Derek Tumulak, vice president of product management at Vormetric.

This white paper outlines what IT and security professionals need to know about the significant security risks of big data, including:

• Critical security vulnerabilities, risks, and challenges• Key business and technical issues such as controls, privacy, and compliance• Effective and reliable protection strategies

About Vormetric

Vormetric (@Vormetric) is the industry leader in data security solutions that span physical, virtual and cloud environments. Data is the new currency and Vormetric helps enterprise customers and government agencies protect what matters-their sensitive data-from both internal and external threats. In a world of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), Vormetric’s market-leading privileged user access controls and security intelligence are invaluable. The company’s scalable solution suite protects any file, any database and any application-anywhere it resides-while maintaining application performance and avoiding key management complexity. Many of the world’s largest and most security-conscious organizations and government agencies, including 17 of the Fortune 25, have standardized on Vormetric to protect their sensitive data and provide them with advanced security intelligence. For more information, visit www.vormetric.com.

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