The emergence of big data is creating greater data centre, says Perry Hutton, Fortinet Africa regional director. He notes big data is expanding the boundaries of existing information security responsibilities, and introducing significant new risks and challenges for data centres.
Hutton points out connecting data centres and transporting the ever-growing data volumes in the fastest and securest manner is no small task - especially when looking at the emergence of the mega data centres.
Market analyst firm, Gartner, says chief information security officers (CISOs) need to collaborate with trusted team members to develop and manage an enterprise data security policy that defines data residency requirements, stakeholder responsibilities, risk appetite, data process needs and security controls.
"The advent of big data is transforming the way data is stored, accessed and processed, and CISOs need to develop a data-centric security approach. Unfortunately, this is not common practice today, and its planning is critical to avoid unco-ordinated data security policies and management," says Brian Lowans, principal research analyst at Gartner.
CISOs should not treat big data security in isolation, but require policies that encompass all data silos if they are to avoid security chaos, says Gartner.
Securing big data comes with a set of unique challenges which go beyond it simply being a target with vast amounts of potentially marketable data, says Gerald Naidoo, CEO of Logikal Consulting.
"Big data security environments have big risks, not limited to potential random security attacks, data breaches, outdated or ineffective security policies, malicious insiders and many more. A big data environment that isn't properly secured can result in compromised data."
To protect a big data environment, what is needed is the proactive enforcement of monitoring, which can ensure real-time detection and application of security defence measures when needed, says Naidoo.
IT organisations need to fundamentally re-think network security instead of taking incremental steps to meet evolving data centre security needs, says Hutton.
"As part of this transformation, IT should consider an architecture that supports larger volumes of data with higher network throughput and with high-speed ports. Also, the infrastructure should have high port density, but also be scalable and elastic to accommodate ever-growing data sets," says Hutton.
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