MapR Moves to Secure Hadoop

Big Data: Not Just for Big Business Anymore

When it comes to anything relating to Big Data, concerns about security are never far away. After all, concentrating massive amounts of data in one place can make for a very tempting target for hackers.

At the Strata Conference + Hadoop World 2013 event, MapR Technologies announced that it is moving to secure its distribution of Hadoop by adding support for native security authentication and authorization.

According to Jack Norris, chief marketing officer for MapR, by embedding native support for authentication and authorization, MapR is eliminating the need to layer more complex approaches to managing security on top of Hadoop. The feedback that MapR got from customers, says Norris, is that they needed a simpler approach to security management that didn’t require the cost or complexity typically associated with Kerberos-based security products that need to be bolted on to Hadoop.

Norris says MapR was able to add native support authentication and authorization because in its distribution of Hadoop, MapR controls the way reads and writes are handled. That unique capability, adds Norris, is what distinguishes MapR from a performance perspective as well.

Once an organization gets past the initial wonderment associated with Big Data and Hadoop, many of the hard realities associated with managing and securing large amounts of data once again start to raise their ugly heads. Rather than trying to deal with those issues after the fact, it’s easier to put a few measures in place at the time of deployment that will save time and prevent headaches further down the road to Big Data.