BlueTalon Enables Secure Use of Hadoop Web Interface by Big Data Teams

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 14, 2017 -- Today, at the 2017 RSA Conference, BlueTalon^® announced its new turnkey offering, BlueTalon SecureAccess for WebHDFS, to help Big Data project teams block hackers from taking advantages of Hadoop security weaknesses. This package enforces the use of authentication and encryption on the Web interface to HDFS, the data storage layer common to all Hadoop components.     

Concerns over the lack of comprehensive security and authentication for big data environments have become a reality in 2017. An estimated 8,000 – 10,000 Hadoop installations worldwide might be at risk^[1], including Hadoop instances deployed in the cloud, as part of a Platform-as-a-Service solution. Specifically, hackers are targeting Hadoop with ransomware, looking for Hadoop instances where the Web interface to HDFS has been left unsecure with out-of-the-box configuration. Deploying Kerberos on Hadoop clusters to secure the Web interface to HDFS is a complex, time consuming, and often disruptive process, and turning it off can severely restrict data access to users and applicatons.

BlueTalon SecureAccess for WebHDFS eliminates the risks without the complexity of Kerberos. The turnkey solution secures the HDFS Web interface by enforcing user authentication and the use of SSL encryption. BlueTalon SecureAccess for WebHDFS is the simplest way to ensure security hygene for web access to your Hadoop cluster. Big data teams can sign-up immediately on the BlueTalon web site for a free trial of BlueTalon SecureAccess for WebHDFS at: http://bluetalon.com/secure_webhdfs.

“BlueTalon’s data-centric security approach secures all paths to the data, including Web interfaces,” said Pratik Verma, founder and chief product officer of BlueTalon. “One characteristic of Hadoop is that you can choose between multiple components for storage, compute, and data access. This architecture provides unprecedented scale and performance but amplifies security risks. BlueTalon SecureAccess for HDFS is a natural addition to our data-centric security platform. It enables large corporations to safely and efficiently deploy big data technology.”

BlueTalon SecureAccess for WebHDFS delivers the following enterprise security capabilities:

• Authentication with username and password: SecureAccess for WebHDFS is easy to use for developers, easy to integrate with applications, and much simpler for Hadoop administrators to setup than Kerberos. It also blocks all calls without password or incorrect passwords to prevent unauthorized Hadoop impersonation used in recent attacks.       
• SSL encrypted traffic: Clients over the internet can use this interface over cloud-hosted Hadoop without fear of network packet sniffers stealing data.
• User Management APIs for the WebHDFS interface: These APIs are developer-friendly and make it easy to programmatically and automatically configure users.    

BlueTalon is showcasing its data-centric security portfolio, including BlueTalon SecureAccess to WebHDFS, at RSA 2017 in San Francisco February 13-17, 2017. You can visit BlueTalon at booth N5005.

[1] threat geek: Revenge of the DevOps Gangster: Open Hadoop Installs Wiped Worldwide

About BlueTalon, Inc.
BlueTalon is a leading provider of data-centric security for big data and new data initiatives. The BlueTalon Policy Engine delivers precise, consistent, and dynamic user access controls to data across Hadoop, Spark, Cassandra, and traditional RDBMS. The BlueTalon Audit Engine provides a full audit trail at the level of detail required for compliance to regulations: user and data.

Fortune 100 companies have deployed BlueTalon to eliminate security blind spots and gain visibility and control at the data layer across cloud-based and on-premises environments. BlueTalon was named a 2016 Gartner “cool vendor” and has won numerous security and big data awards.

Learn more about BlueTalon at http://www.bluetalon.com

Contact:
Isabelle Dumont
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 650-799-7542