2017 Big Data 100: 10 Coolest Big Data Protection And Security Analytics Software Vendors

Secure In The Knowledge

Managing IT security, detecting system intrusions and keeping out the bad guys, is one of the biggest challenges for system managers today. That's given rise to a class of big data analytics tools that are specifically designed for cyber security and data protection tasks – protecting big data using big data technology.

As part of this year's fifth annual Big Data 100 roundup, we've included a list of 10 big data protection and security analytics vendors that have demonstrated an ability to innovate in bringing to market products and services that help businesses work with big data.

BlueTalon

Top Executive: CEO Eric Tilenius

BlueTalon develops software for data-centric security, user access control and data masking, providing control and visibility at the data layer across Hadoop, Spark, Cassandra, relational databases and other big data systems.

Late last year Dell EMC selected Talon's Policy Engine and Audit Engine software to be the data security and governance component of its Dell EMC Analytic Insights Module big data product.

Founded in 2013, BlueTalon is based in Redwood City, Calif.

DataGravity

Top Executive: CEO Paula Long

DataGravity develops technology that provides a way for organizations to identify sensitive data across their virtual environments and protect it from theft and misuse.

DataGravity, based in Nashua, N.H., started out developing "data-aware" storage systems that could search and govern stored data, but has evolved since its 2012 founding to focus on data protection.

The company says its DataGravity for Virtualization technology offers behavior-based data protection and visibility into unstructured data across virtual environments, allowing users to combat security threats in real time.

Dataguise

Top Executive: CEO Manmeet Singh

Dataguise develops the DgSecure data governance software that automatically detects, protects and monitors sensitive data that's on premise and in the cloud. The technology works with PCI, HIPAA and PII (personally identifiable data) information and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation compliance requirements.

In March Dataguise, founded in 2007 and based in Fremont, Calif., announced that DgSecure provides sensitive data monitoring and masking capabilities for data in Apache Hive systems and sensitive data monitoring for MapR and Teradata systems and the Oracle database.

Exabeam

Top Executive: CEO Nir Polak

Exabeam develops a behavior-based security intelligence system that uses advanced analytics and data science for threat detection, data loss protection and security breach investigation and to thwart insider threats.

Exabeam launched its Security Intelligence Platform in January with Log Manager, Advanced Analytics, Incident Responder, Threat Hunter and other tools.

In February San Mateo, Calif.-based Exabeam, founded in 2013, raised $30 million in Series C financing.

LogRhythm

Top Executive: President and CEO Andy Grolnick

LogRythm's security intelligence and analytics system detects and neutralizes cyber threats. The company's products combine SIEM (security information and event management) data with log management, network and endpoint monitoring and forensics, and security analytics data.

LogRhythm, founded in 2003 and based in Boulder, Colo., raised $50 million in venture financing in August 2016.

Protegrity

Top Executive: CEO Suni Munshani

Protegrity develops enterprise and cloud data security software for data-centric encryption and tokenization to protect sensitive data while maintaining its usability.

In April the company, based in Stamford, Conn., debuted Protegrity 7 with an expanded portfolio of data protectors and SDKs that support a greater diversity of cloud and on-premise data sources. The new release also offers full policy lifecycle management for defining and changing data security polices without changing the underlying applications, and the ability to choose different data protection styles including tokenization, masking and encryption.

Securonix

Top Executive: CEO Sachin Nayyar

Securonix markets a security intelligence platform for monitoring security events, identity and access data to detect insider threats and advanced targeted attacks.

Securonix launched its SNYPR Security Analytics Platform system in February. The company also offers the SNYPR Security Data Lake for transforming huge volumes of big data into meaningful security insights.

The company was founded in 2008 and is based in Los Angeles.

Sqrrl

Top Executive: CEO Mark Terenzoni

Sqrrl has taken advanced data analysis technology developed by the National Security Agency and developed software for big data analysis and cyber security.

Calling itself "the threat hunting company," Sqrrl's software helps organizations target, hunt and disrupt advanced cyber threats. The technology combines user and entity behavior analytics, machine learning and advanced risk scoring with multi-petabyte scalability to detect adversarial behavior.

Based in Cambridge, Mass., Sqrrl was founded in 2012.

Thales e-Security

Top Executive: President and CEO Alan Kessler

Thales, previously known as Vormetric, develops security software to protect data in files, databases and applications. The company says it currently has more than 155 petabytes of data under the protection of its products.

Thales, based in Plantation, Fla., is touting its "digital birth certificate" technology as a way to protect Internet of things devices and IoT data from the point of collection to aggregated data repositories.

Zettaset

Top Executive: President and CEO Jim Vogt

Zettaset develops its Zettaset Big Data Encryption Suite of data-centric data protection software for enterprise-class data protection for Hadoop and NoSQL data systems.

In November Zettaset unveiled the XCrypt Cloud Encryption Gateway for protecting big data in the cloud.

Founded in 2009, Zettaset is based in Mountain View, Calif.