Cryptography Brakes Big Data

No, that's not a typo, it's pithy commentary!

So, what do brakes have to do with cryptography and Big Data?  Actually quite a bit.

People forget that, in the litany of technological safety advances that have been added to cars, brakes weren't there from the beginning.  Although horse and steam-powered transportation had used a wooden block that would press against a wooden wheel, internal combustion engines also ushered in the use of rubber tires, for which wooden brakes were useless.  Looking through the history books, it wasn't until Renault invented the first drum brake in 1902 that internal-combustion engine automobiles got a viable braking system.  When brakes were added to cars, they could actually go faster... in the decade before drum brakes were added to automobiles, your speed was regulated by your sense of how long it would take for you to coast to a stop if something stepped in front of you.  Once brakes were added, automobiles could go 10, 15, even 20 miles per hour!  This is a perfect example of a control, that would literally control the speed of the car.

I'd contend that appropriate uses of cryptography, anonymization and tokenization permits confidential and private data to be used in Big Data and Cloud repositories, enabling the business to go faster.  Without the right controls to provide safe use of sensitive information, Big Data and Cloud are both hampered by how much private and confidential data can be analyzed.  By adding controls, we enable the business to maximize the level of value, without increasing the risk.

There you have it - you can now tell the business you want to allow them to go faster, by applying controls in much the same way as their car.