In an era where data breaches and cyber threats are rampant, Oracle has taken a significant step forward. Last week, at Oracle CloudWorld in Las Vegas, the tech giant announced its participation in an industry-wide initiative to design a new open standard for network and data security. This collaborative effort, which includes Applied Invention and other major technology providers, aims to bolster data protection across both on-premises and distributed cloud environments.
The Need for a New Approach
Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president of Security and Developer Platforms at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, emphasized the urgency of this initiative:
“Over the last 20 years, the cybersecurity industry has produced many incremental changes, but we need a fundamentally new approach to protect our data in the increasingly complex cloud era. Organizations need a way to describe their data security policies in one place where they can be easily understood and audited, and they need a way to ensure those policies are enforced across their entire computing infrastructure, including their clouds.”
Addressing the Challenges
The new standard promises to be a game-changer. It will enable networks to collectively enforce shared security policies, enhancing the security architecture organizations already use without the need to modify existing applications and networks. This intent-based security policy, which is designed to be easily readable and auditable by humans, will be enforced at the network layer. All traffic will contain authenticated attributes about the sender, receiver, and type of data in motion, allowing the network to determine where that data can move.
Technology Behind the Standard
The brains behind this revolutionary standard is none other than Danny Hillis and his team at Applied Invention. Hillis shared his enthusiasm, stating, “ZPR is how the Internet would have been designed from the start if modern security technologies had been available. I believe it is going to make everyone’s data more secure. This initiative is an opportunity to make a generational improvement in cybersecurity for the entire world. We are looking forward to collaborating with Oracle and other industry leaders to realize its potential.”
Expert Opinion
Dave McCarthy, research vice president of cloud and edge infrastructure services at IDC, weighed in on the potential of this new standard:
“When designing a secure cybersecurity system, the more checkpoints and restrictions the organization puts in place, the safer the data stored in that system will be. The tradeoff is that those restrictions can cause major inefficiencies. The new standard Oracle is helping develop has the potential to change all of that by adding a unified layer of security on top of existing solutions.”
In Summary
The unveiling of this open standard for network and data security marks a pivotal moment in the realm of cybersecurity. As cloud adoption continues to rise and IT environments grow in complexity, this initiative by Oracle and its partners offers a beacon of hope for a more secure digital future. We invite our readers to share their thoughts and insights on this groundbreaking development in the comments below.
