If it seems that security is an afterthought in the big data ecosystem, you're right. And that's unfortunate, because attackers go where the data is. Our security surveys consistently show that even conventional structured databases aren't protected as well as they should be. And now we're piling up unstructured data.

We understand how this state of affairs came about. The whole point of NoSQL databases and superfast key-value stores like Redis is to provide rapid, unfettered access to data. The mission statement says nothing about protecting all that data.

This isn't a news flash to security pros, but those charged with managing big data seem unfazed. In our InformationWeek 2012 Big Data Survey of business technology professionals managing a minimum of 10 TB of data, we asked about a dozen management priorities. Robust security came in eighth, selected by just 17% of respondents.

That would be less scary if the No. 1 application driving big data needs at respondents' companies weren't financial transactions.

Clearly, the developers driving the NoSQL bus just don't get it. The only thing we've gotten from years of pushing to secure Hadoop and other big data technologies is integration with authentication frameworks such as Kerberos. Excuse us if we don't swoon with gratitude.

As technologies like Hadoop and NoSQL go mainstream, this situation must be addressed. In 2010, only a handful of companies, notably Foursquare and Craigslist, were heavily into unstructured data, and they didn't deal with sensitive information. But 2011 was a turning point, says Max Schireson, president of 10gen, developer of the NoSQL database MongoDB. "We went from a handful of [employees] to over 100," says Schireson. "We can barely keep up with demand."

10gen's customer list has expanded to include financial services companies such as Intuit, ...