Zettaset to Create Secure Hadoop with ‘SHadoop’ Initiative

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Zettaset today announced SHadoop™, the company’s new security initiative designed to mitigate the current security vulnerabilities of Hadoop. The new initiative will be incorporated as a security layer into Zettaset’s Hadoop Orchestrator™ data management platform.

“We are bridging the gap between security and data management in a way that’s easily accessible to every enterprise and that doesn’t require expertise often associated with the implementation of Hadoop. Our SHadoop initiative is addressing the critical security issues that we all face in our daily efforts implementing Hadoop.”

Zettaset will showcase SHadoop at the RSA conference in San Francisco, February 27-March 2, 2012.

The SHadoop layer will mitigate known architectural and input validation issues that exist within the core Hadoop code; improve upon user role audit tracking and user level security; and future versions will enhance security through encryption on the Hadoop cluster (from a file system perspective) and encrypted communication between nodes.

”Hadoop is the best solution for handling big data and is constantly improving, but it hasn’t focused on security -- which is why making Hadoop more secure is one of Zettaset’s top priorities,” said Brian Christian, Zettaset CTO. “We are bridging the gap between security and data management in a way that’s easily accessible to every enterprise and that doesn’t require expertise often associated with the implementation of Hadoop. Our SHadoop initiative is addressing the critical security issues that we all face in our daily efforts implementing Hadoop.”

Zettaset’s SHadoop security layer is part of Zettaset’s Hadoop Orchestrator, which works with all major distributions of Hadoop. The SHadoop initiative alleviates security issues across a Hadoop implementation through the following advanced features:

Kerberos authentication, which is already available on the platform and provides initial user authentication using the Zettaset UI;
Role-based security for the UI and API, including the ability to restrict execution of jobs, import/export capabilities and administration capabilities within the platform;
Extensive audit log capabilities, including the ability to track all user or group activity within the platform through the UI, Zettaset command line or Zettaset API.

SHadoop will also give administrators the ability to establish and store a baseline security policy for all the users that can be compared against the current security policy. In addition, users will be able to synchronize user/group permissions with the Unix Operating System, Active Directory, the Zettaset platform and Kerberos.

Zettaset has created the first self-healing data management environment within Hadoop that identifies potential system failures and corrects them automatically. By enabling immense cost savings through eliminating the need to hire a large team of Hadoop specialists, Zettaset removes the financial barrier for small and mid-sized businesses to get into big data. The solution also features numerous enterprise Hadoop components that are not found in free open-source versions of Hadoop. These components automatically maintain the health and welfare of the user’s cluster, making administration of a Hadoop cluster much more simple.

Christian has an extensive background in implementing solutions that increase and maintain security for large and complex computer systems. He co-founded SPI Dynamics, which was the leading expert in Web application security assessment and testing before its successful exit to Hewlett-Packard in 2007. He has also held key security positions at Lucent Technologies, Security First Technologies and Internet Security Systems (ISS). While at Security First, the first online banking company, he helped to establish the baseline of Internet financial commerce and also created security policies for several Web-based Internet banking sites throughout America and Europe. At ISS, he helped to create the standard for the industry’s first penetration and vulnerability assessment models.

About Zettaset

Zettaset’s big data management solution delivers a hardened, secure and highly available version of Hadoop. The company’s big data platform is a high-performance, easy-to-deploy solution with zero points of failure that seamlessly manages itself. Zettaset offers greater stability within Hadoop while making big data more accessible to Enterprise IT pros, yielding productivity and cost efficiency benefits. For more information, visit www.zettaset.com.