Data breaches continue to make headlines around the world, negatively affecting not only a business’ bottom line, but also their credibility. According to a forecast by the Information Security Forum (ISF), a global, independent information security body, the number and magnitude of data breaches are expected to continue and even increase in the coming year, which will likely result in far higher costs for organizations of all sizes. To prevent data breaches and minimize risk, it is crucial for organizations, especially those with global operations, to make sure that all bases are covered. And one of the best places companies should start is their database.
Databases do more than just store and manage critical business information. They also play a very important role in the digital transformation journey of today’s modern companies. Couchbase, the creator of the world’s first Engagement Database, believes that more than just speed, organizations should also demand agility, scalability, and of course, security in their database platforms.
SourceForge recently spoke with Perry Krug, Principal Architect at Couchbase, to discuss the importance of securing today’s modern databases. Krug also shares how the Couchbase Data Platform enables developers to maintain security throughout the development lifecycle and thus, give end users exceptional customer experiences.
Q: Tell us a bit more about Couchbase. What is the company’s vision and mission, and who are some of your current clients?
Perry Kruger, Principal Architect, Couchbase
A: Created in 2011, Couchbase is a NoSQL database company that offers data management solutions for enterprise companies. The company’s open source Couchbase Data Platform includes Couchbase Server and Couchbase Mobile. Driven by a mission to be the data platform that revolutionizes digital innovation, Couchbase created the world’s first Engagement Database. It is built on the most powerful NoSQL technology to deliver unmatched agility and manageability, as well as unparalleled performance at any scale, to deliver more personalized customer experiences.
Couchbase is trusted by leading organizations worldwide such as AOL, Amadeus, AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, Concur, Disney, Dixons Carphone, eBay, General Electric, Marriott, Neiman Marcus, Ryanair, Rakuten/Viber, Tesco, Verizon, Wells Fargo, and more.
Q: Couchbase prides itself as the world’s first Engagement Database. Can you please expand on this? What does the Couchbase Data Platform offer to developers, enterprises, as well as their clients and end users?
A: At the center of the enterprise’s digital transformation efforts is the goal to improve customer experiences and provide a competitive advantage that meets the modern customer’s demands.
An Engagement Database is an infrastructure built to better facilitate modern workloads and address rapidly changing consumer expectations. Couchbase has been a pioneer in this space by creating the industry’s first Engagement Database focused on empowering enterprises to continually create and reinvent the customer experience.
Unlike traditional databases, the Couchbase Data Platform taps into dynamic data, at any scale and across any channel or device, to liberate data’s full potential. This provides enterprise companies a key differentiator, a database optimized for change that allows businesses to create responsive, personalized and reliable interactions that lead to transactions and improved customer experience. The platform also helps accelerate time to market and reduce infrastructure costs.
With the latest update, released in October 2017, the platform delivers even greater agility, better query performance, and simplified management–not just for server deployments in the cloud, but also for mobile devices at the edge.
Q: Some developers contend that open source software is more secure than proprietary software. What is your take on this?
A: Open source software is not inherently more secure than proprietary software. However, through community collaboration and development, open source software has the ability to become more secure as any security flaws in the source code are visible.
At Couchbase, our focus is on providing enterprise-class software to our paying customers, but we embrace the free-flow of ideas and wide adoption that an open source project allows for and believe very strongly that there is a place for both. We firmly believe that our software has been strengthened and made more secure largely by virtue of being open source.
Q: Security threats are always present. What measures has Couchbase established to make sure that critical customer data is protected?
A: Database infrastructure stores a business’ most valuable internal and customer data. Therefore, the data within these databases is becoming increasingly valuable, creating a higher risk for security threats. The Couchbase data platform offers security controls to protect the entire stack from the clients, over the network and to the disk. Couchbase embraces a “secure-by-default” ethos by requiring passwords, supporting the latest encryption technologies and integrating with multiple authentication mechanisms.
Albeit a critical piece, the database is only one layer where security can and should be applied. Couchbase encourages its customers to keep security a top priority overall and provides educational support on best practices beyond the database. Couchbase believes the first cardinal rule of any database security strategy is never expose your database to the internet. It’s important to maintain a system that cannot be easily exposed and would take technical deliberate action to break its stronghold.
Q: How does Couchbase enable developers to fend off security threats?
A: In a mission to protect against rising security threats and vulnerabilities, many developers are adopting solutions that are secure by default. The Couchbase data platform offers this approach, which enables developers to maintain security as a top priority from early development stages through deployment. In addition, Couchbase Inc. is constantly alerted to any potential security vulnerabilities and takes a proactive approach to both addressing/patching as well as notifying its users.
Q: Recently, Callsign Inc., successfully integrated its Intelligence Driven Authentication (IDA) technology with Couchbase. Can you share with us what brought this partnership together? What is the significance of this partnership to developers and enterprises?
A: The partnership with Callsign came about as part of Couchbase’s continued mission to provide extensive security features to protect customer-facing applications and business critical data. The integration with Callsign’s Intelligence Driven Authentication (IDA) technology helps improve protection for privileged administrator access within the Couchbase Data Platform.
Q: How are Couchbase solutions helping to shape the big data, cloud, IoT and mobility sectors?
A: Couchbase’s solutions are helping enterprise companies embrace emerging trends in big data, cloud, IoT and mobile. The Couchbase Mobile platform helps support real-time compute at the edge, allowing organizations to update their infrastructure and take advantage of edge computing. These capabilities are being utilized by Couchbase customers in a variety of sectors including retail, travel, digital health and industrial IoT.
For example, SyncThink, a world leader in neuro-technology, adopted Couchbase Mobile to provide secure, HIPAA-compliant, offline capabilities for its EYE-SYNC solution. The mobile database technology offered by Couchbase enables the SyncThink VR headset to work properly in areas with little to no WiFi connectivity – such as a packed football stadium where Wifi connections in the stadium are slow or non-existent or in the case of the military, in no-service areas.
Q: How does the Couchbase Data Platform help companies deliver a more personalized customer experience?
A: The Couchbase Data Platform provides a foundation that is optimized for flexible and changing data and allows companies to support dynamic customer interactions via web and mobile applications. The Couchbase Data Platform helps companies capture and serve customer interactions, and gives developers the tools to access data to create more personalized experiences. The platform’s memory-oriented architecture provides speed and flexibility to support adaptable and responsive applications that can handle unpredictable spikes in demand. Finally, geographic distribution and simple cluster management ensure constant availability in the face of both planned maintenance and unplanned failures.
Q: What are some of the common issues that arise when it comes to importing and organizing big data? How was this addressed in the past, and how is it being tackled by today’s solutions?
A: In terms of traditional databases, importing and organizing new data was a costly and time intensive task. Relational databases are built on top of a schema model that requires modelling to be done in advance of loading any data or building applications. Therefore, when new data is imported or changes need to be made, it’s a time and resource-intensive process that can take months. Additionally, organizing unstructured data, adding new data types and scaling to meet the storage and performance requirements have proven challenging and costly with traditional database systems.
NoSQL solutions, such as Couchbase, help address many of these pain points. First, NoSQL does not require predefined schemas, making the process much easier to update as your data and requirements change. Additionally, NoSQL is designed to facilitate unstructured data (e.g. social media posts, video, email), which makes up a growing amount of today’s customer data. NoSQL also provides a more cost effective model for scaling as it allows you to deploy no more hardware than is required to meet the present workload in addition to being designed specifically for cloud and virtualized environments which are ubiquitous parts of today’s infrastructures.. These modern database systems help developers to address change with speed and efficiency.
Q: What does the future hold for Couchbase?
A: The team is continuously working on platform updates. In the year ahead, we’ll be putting an increasing focus on our mobile and edge computing capabilities that provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace and help enterprise companies create more responsive offline applications.
About Couchbase
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Couchbase is a trusted name in NoSQL databases. Couchbases designs and develops NoSQL databases for the digital economy. The Couchbase Data Platform, the world’s first Engagement Database, includes open source Couchbase Server and Couchbase Mobile. The platform provides unmatched agility, scalability, and manageability to help enterprises to deliver exceptional customer experiences.