Okera Works to Solve the File Data Access Management Challenge with New Solution

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 16, 2022 — Okera, a leader in Universal Data Authorization, today announced the immediate availability of OkeraEnsemble, a comprehensive file control solution that extends secure data access management for tabular data and multi-structured files within the same policy with native scaling on Amazon EMR. With OkeraEnsemble, analysts/engineers and business/low-code data users have swift access to tabular and file-based data at massive scale using a single coherent collaborative platform. As part of Okera’s mission to democratize data for all users so they can safely and securely access data across cloud, hybrid and on-premise sources, OkeraEnsemble protects sensitive data and ensures privacy by managing data access without having to use different tools for both files and tables.

To learn more, read a comprehensive whitepaper, or sign up to meet in person at AWS re:Invent 2022 here.

“With OkeraEnsemble, FINRA can look to enable self-service data analytics by providing highly secure access to a wide variety of structured and unstructured data through latest generation analytical platforms,” said Pragnya Gandhi, Senior Principal Architect at FINRA. “And, we can envision protecting the data from our enterprise data lake and gain the benefits of centralized entitlement policies and audit trails across hundreds of petabytes of data without having to write complex identity access management policies.”

OkeraEnsemble enables users to define attribute-based access control within the Okera Dynamic Access Platform through a single unified source and access unstructured data, such as documents, images, video, and audio files stored as files on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Unlike traditional offerings, OkeraEnsemble on Okera nScale with Amazon EMR – currently in beta with select customers – delivers the full spectrum of data access management to ensure that data is fully protected, allowing users to leverage the rich types of data needed for analytic and data science use cases while reducing the work typically required to transform the data to a structured format.

“Most data access governance products do a fine job of controlling access to structured data, but they ignore the fact that cloud computing’s biggest benefit, separation of store and compute, is to allow authorized users to reach the underlying files directly,” said Nong Li, Founder and CEO of Okera. “OkeraEnsemble enables users to tag files containing structured or unstructured data as sensitive and leverage the policies meant to control access to structured data stores and files and dynamically enable access to only authorized users or groups to list, copy or view files. Okera helps remove the challenges typically posed by identity-based access management, as policies are consistently enforced across all the access methods that data analysts, data scientists, and data engineers might want to employ, including Amazon S3 REST APIs, AWS Command Line Interface, Apache Spark on Amazon EMR, or Databricks.”

Highlights and unique features of OkeraEnsemble include:

• Progressive Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC): Provides better data security and faster compliance, creates massive economies of scale, and ensures consistency in policy enforcement. Allows users to classify files and folders, leverage tags in file access controls and utilize advanced Okera functionality, such as applying user attributes or defining time-bound conditions for permissions. Configurations can be made using an easy-to-use point-and-click user interface or by leveraging Okera APIs.

• Infinite nScale: Handles enormous amounts of users and supports large volumes of data access requests via Okera’s pattern for tabular data access enforcement. Allows organizations to fully leverage their existing compute infrastructure and achieve elasticity at no additional cost for access control of both tabular data and file data, while ensuring consistent policy enforcement and auditing.

“Strategic companies like Okera are providing a tremendous value-add for our customers who rely on Amazon EMR for petabyte-scale data processing, interactive analytics, and machine learning using open-source frameworks such as Apache Spark, Apache Hive, and Presto,” said Mehul Shah, general manager, Amazon EMR at AWS. “Thanks to solutions like OkeraEnsemble on Amazon EMR, our customers can accelerate time to value with Amazon EMR and Amazon SageMaker by leveraging both structured and unstructured Amazon S3 data files quickly and easily while ensuring security and governance at scale that work well with existing AWS services.”

Okera, the Universal Data Authorization company, helps modern, data-driven enterprises accelerate innovation, minimize data security risks, and demonstrate regulatory compliance. The Okera Dynamic Access Platform automatically enforces universal fine-grained access control policies. This allows employees, customers, and partners to use data responsibly, while protecting them from inappropriately accessing data that is confidential, personally identifiable, or regulated. Okera’s robust audit capabilities and data usage intelligence deliver the real-time and historical information that data security, compliance, and data delivery teams need to respond quickly to incidents, optimize processes, and analyze the performance of enterprise data initiatives. Okera began development in 2016 and now dynamically authorizes access to hundreds of petabytes of sensitive data for the world’s most demanding F100 companies and regulatory agencies. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, ClearSky Security, and Felicis Ventures. For more information, visit www.okera.com or contact [email protected].

Source: Okera Inc.