Cloudera unveils secure private link network for cloud data

Cloudera has launched its new Private Link Network to enhance secure, internet-free cloud connectivity. The new service addresses data security and privacy concerns for highly regulated industries by preventing data from traversing the public internet.

Industries such as finance, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals often face significant challenges due to providers' inability to guarantee that traffic between tenants within the same cloud does not expose sensitive data. The Cloudera Private Link Network seeks to mitigate these challenges by offering a unified, cross-cloud private connectivity service. This service enables enterprises to securely manage data-intensive workloads across various cloud environments via a single, specialised network.

The Cloudera Private Link Network integrates seamlessly with major cloud providers by leveraging existing services like AWS PrivateLink, Azure Private Link, and other network infrastructure, such as multi-cloud connectivity. This integration allows for secure data transfer across multiple cloud environments, promoting consistent security and streamlined management. Customers can use the Cloudera Command Line Interface to efficiently self-serve and provision services.

Dipto Chakravarty, Chief Product Officer at Cloudera, commented on the launch: "Cloudera Private Link Network is purpose-built and managed by Cloudera to address enterprise privacy and connectivity concerns. By offloading the management of Private Link Network to Cloudera, it will both lower TCO for your organisation and free up valuable resources, allowing you to focus on strategic business initiatives." Chakravarty emphasised the importance of managing "data integrity and trustworthiness throughout the architecture," which helps enterprises to safeguard sensitive customer data.

Industry analyst Sanjeev Mohan also remarked on the benefits of the new Cloudera service. "As organisations move to cross-cloud deployments, they expect to drastically reduce the complexity of multi-platform configurations to the point that they should only have to specify private link network endpoints between their control plane and the data planes," he said. Mohan added that the Private Link Network supports enterprises in protecting their data more effectively while leveraging various clouds to reduce overall costs. He noted that this advancement "further establishes Cloudera as a leader in providing secure, cross-cloud connectivity for metadata management."

Cloudera positions itself as a hybrid platform for data, analytics and AI, emphasising the ability to transform data of all types on any public or private cloud into valuable insights. The company claims that its open data lakehouse enables scalable and secure data management with portable cloud-native analytics. This functionality allows customers to bring generative AI models to their data while maintaining privacy and ensuring reliable AI deployments.