By Sneha Ramesh
Technology would be incomplete without the massive streams of data being generated. It can be said that data is the very lifeblood of an organisation. Being such a valuable asset, it provides a competitive advantage for every business and creates innovative business opportunities (provided it is used properly). This article describes the concept of a data fabric and how eXate facilitates the implementation of a data fabric.
Data, Data Everywhere...
Data can be classified as structured, unstructured, governed, ungoverned. They are collectively referred to as a data swamp. The 3D’s of data, as I would like to call it, are: Distributed, Dynamic and Diverse. There is yet another D for Data that has gained a lot of attention over the last decade – data is Difficult to manage. This is true because of the sheer volume and the security or privacy problems data poses. To combat this, a plausible solution could be the growth of data centric organizations.
Data Fabric: The Buzz
A Data Fabric is an architecture and set of data services that provide consistent capabilities across a choice of endpoints, spanning on-premises and multiple cloud environments. Data fabric has joined the jargon of data management and analytics keywords. Recently, Gartner identified “data fabric” as one of the “Top 10 Data and Analytics Technology Trends for 2021.” To put it in layperson terms, a data fabric can be described as single environment consisting of an integrated architecture, and services running on the architecture. This helps organizations manage their data. The objective of the data fabric is to maximize the value of an organization’s data and accelerate digital transformation. Data fabric has capabilities that simplify and integrate data management across cloud and on-premise. This being the case, it can deliver consistent, unified and hybrid cloud data services for data visibility and insights, data access and control, data analytics and data protection and security.
A data fabric can be imagined as a weave that is spread over a large space that links multiple locations, types, and sources of data, along with methods for accessing the linked data. It continuously identifies and connects data from disparate applications to discover unique, business-relevant relationships between the available data points. The data can be processed, managed, stored, and secured as it moves within the data fabric. Using a data fabric, data can also be accessed and shared to internal and external applications. This will provide great potential for analytical and organizational purposes. It can simply be thought of as a one-off solution to a data integration or management problem. It can be deployed is a permanent and scalable solution to manage all the data under one comprehensive environment.
DataSecOps: An Implementation Data Fabric in Every Ecosystem
The confluence of technologies at work today is seeing the emergence of a new market segment called DataSecOps which directly addresses the issues of data management, data security and data governance. DataSecOps melds an automated mechanism to manage data, along with security, in an effective operations setup. DataSecOps is a discipline which empowers software engineers, data scientists, governance risk and control, cyber security & operations teams to work together in a single application for safer and easier access, analysis, delivery, and governance of data. The very crux of this domain is that the entire business and the associated processes must be involved in combating security issues, which is also the core of a data fabric.
Traditionally, databases have been very secure because, so few people have access to them and they were all on-premises. It comes down to cloud service provider policies. Data security within the cloud is up to the client, and they need to take responsibility for protecting it. DataSecOps and its data-centric protections make sure the data remains secure in the cloud. As we can see, the very principles of DataSecOps ties back very well with the concepts and the purpose of a data fabric. While most companies are seeking to enhance data management, incorporation of DataSecOps as a way of work will help the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. At eXate we have internalised DataSecOps as a way of working and we focus on aggregating Privacy Enhancing Techniques (PETs) and deploying the right PET at the right time.
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For more of our insights on the latest data innovations and developments, read our range of blogs here, or download our eBook, Introduction to DataSecOps, for a fully comprehensive overview of DataSecOps.