Big Data encompasses the rapidly growing volume of internally accumulated organizational data plus external sources such as social media, government databases, and inter-organization data sharing. Technologies like Hadoop—originally developed by Yahoo and released as open source on Apache—emerged to store and process these massive datasets into “Smart” information by enabling parallel search and processing across commodity hardware. Because Big Data environments demand more flexibility than conventional relational databases, NoSQL databases have expanded by adopting looser consistency models to achieve horizontal scaling, higher availability, and efficient append/retrieve operations.
A recurring issue across early Big Data technologies is that they prioritized processing capability over security and compliance, especially in identity and access control for administration. This gap was tolerable during experimental use but becomes unacceptable as Big Data moves into commercial deployment. Organizations must remain compliant with laws and regulations while mitigating misuse via privilege abuse, curiosity-driven unauthorized access, deliberate leakage, accidental disclosure, and flawed analyses that produce inappropriate conclusions. An information-centric approach requires availability, integrity, and confidentiality, which in turn depends on strong identity and access management for Big Data platforms.
Centrify, a US identity management vendor founded in 2004 with over 5,000 customers, extends its Active Directory–centered capabilities to Big Data clusters. Centrify Server Suite integrates Hadoop and NoSQL nodes with Microsoft Active Directory for centralized authentication, privilege management, and auditing, supporting single sign-on and “one user, one identity.” It automates Hadoop secure-mode configuration with Kerberos tied to Active Directory, enables role-based privilege elevation via Zone technology, records session activity for compliance, and offers VPN-less remote access through Centrify Identity Service and Privilege Service. It also supports administrative account lockdown with password rotation and controlled checkout. While strong for Active Directory-centric organizations, it does not fully address broader Big Data governance needs such as provenance, external data ownership, and classification, and no fully comprehensive integrated solution is currently available.
