We have all been there.  You buy a product, and immediately see it get outmoded. You drive that new car off the lot and a week later read that the next year’s model will be faster and get better mileage. You buy a new phone for it’s higher resolution camera, and soon find out the next iteration will be more compact and also offer high-definition video capture.

ClickToTweet: Data Security is about to get Better, Faster and Stronger @chvrles http://bit.ly/1SEvDcB pic.twitter.com/MBEJOSrEEq

It’s understood that innovation and replaceable technologies are the engines that drive consumer markets. However, when it comes to enterprise software, especially security products, this fast obsolescence model simply can’t apply.

I’m happy to report that Vormetric is focusing on building solutions that have a long shelf life and deliver increasing value and returns in the long term. Back in April, I shared a blog that made reference to a 451 Research paper on the Vormetric Data Security Platform.  The author of the paper, Garrett Bekker, wrote, “With its platform strategy, Vormetric has quietly assembled one of the broadest data-protection portfolios on the market, and now can address most use cases across on-premises, cloud and big-data environments.” (Source: 451 Research, “Vormetric enters encryption gateway fray with latest extension to its platform strategy,” Garrett Bekker, April 13, 2015, page 5.)

At Vormetric, we continue to focus on expanding the capabilities of the Vormetric Data Security Platform, so we can help customers address all their data-at-rest security or compliance use cases, and whichever requirement arises next. Our goal is to enable customers to encrypt everything, everywhere.

Toward that end, in the first quarter of 2016, we are delivering the next release of the Vormetric Data Security Platform. With this release, we’ll offer a set of new capabilities that make the platform better, stronger, and faster. These enhancements span our product line and they’re all available through software updates, which means customers can harness these new capabilities, while leveraging their existing investments. Plus, they’ll be able to deploy these enhancements without having to swap out hardware or disrupt their operations.

Following are some highlights of the new and enhanced capabilities we’re delivering.

Better

We’re making the platform’s use case coverage even broader and better:

• Better SAP HANA support. SAP has reviewed and qualified Vormetric Transparent Encryption as suitable for use in SAP solution environments for data encryption to protect SAP HANA on premises and in the cloud.
• Better field-level database encryption. We’re providing a format preserving encryption (FPE) option in Vormetric Application Encryption. Now a developer can easily add encryption in their applications, without altering the database schema to accommodate encrypted fields. Plus, with the solution’s same libraries, developers can also select standards-based AES encryption.

Stronger

The Vormetric Data Security Platform will provide stronger controls in Docker and Hadoop of environments:

• Strong protections in Docker environments. Now Vormetric Transparent Encryption can protect containers and data at rest in Docker environments. Through the solution’s encryption capabilities, access controls, and security intelligence logs, organizations can protect and control container images and backups and ensure they only run in authorized environments. In addition, the solution enables customers to secure the data at rest created and used by Docker containers.
• Stronger, granular access control policies for Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). Vormetric Transparent Encryption currently protects the data in Hadoop big data environments from theft and privileged user abuse, and has done this for some time. Last year, our VP of Engineering wrote a good blog on this topic. With this next platform release, we’re enabling a higher level of security in these environments. Vormetric Transparent Encryption will be extended to enable security administrators to apply per-user, per-group or per-folder access control policies for the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). As a result, administrators can create encryption zones that offer increased isolation and control of Hadoop data sets. Each encryption zone can be aligned with specific groups or tenants, and each zone can be assigned a unique set of policies and encryption keys. In addition, the solution will enable customers to encrypt only the sensitive data sets as opposed to the entire Hadoop Data Lake.

Faster

We’re continuously looking to improve on the return on investment that customers realize by investing in Vormetric solutions. In this effort, it’s critical to find ways to improve operational efficiency and performance, so customers can deploy faster and reduce overhead. With this next release, we’re meeting these requirements by offering the following improvements:

• Faster integration with RESTful APIs. The Vormetric Data Security Manager will feature REST APIs that enable efficient integration with orchestration and provisioning tools. Not only will this help accelerate deployment, but it will simplify management of the Vormetric Data Security Platform.
• Faster automated deployment. The next release will offer shared secret registration capabilities that will better support the auto scaling of servers that contain Vormetric Transparent Encryption.
• Faster NoSQL performance. Compared to prior releases, encryption performance in NoSQL databases has been enhanced. For example, when running the four core YCSB (Yahoo! Cloud Serving Benchmark) workloads, performance improved by an average of 180%. (Tests were run on MongoDB, version 3.0.2, with a MMAP Storage Engine.)

Conclusion

The customers we work with take security and operational efficiency very seriously. They operate the most advanced technologies in some of the most demanding environments. When securing data across many environments, having a single platform that can address all use cases—both up front and as needs evolve—is critical. By leveraging the Vormetric Data Security Platform, customers can speed implementation, streamline administration, and realize benefits faster. Ultimately, the Vormetric Data Security Platform offers the strong data-at-rest controls that give our customers peace of mind and enable them to spend more time and effort focusing on their core business.

With these latest enhancements to the platform, we’re helping our existing customers address more use cases, and get even more value from their prior investments. Because these enhancements are available via software upgrades, we’re enabling customers to capitalize on these capabilities with minimal effort and disruption.

This release will be a great way to kick off 2016, and it is only the beginning of the new, high-value products and capabilities that the Vormetric Data Security Platform will deliver all year long.