Confluent, Inc., the data streaming pioneer, is announcing a series of new capabilities for Confluent Cloud, forwarding the company’s mission of delivering a comprehensive data streaming platform that meets its users where they are. These latest updates—support for Table API, extending Apache Flink to Java and Python developers; private networking for Flink; a Confluent extension for Visual Studio Code (VS Code); and Client-Side Field Level Encryption—each serve to make stream processing and data streaming more accessible and secure, according to Confluent.
The purpose of stream processing is to empower enterprises to blend and enrich their data with information across the business, helping build real-time applications for a wide span of use cases. Apache Flink, despite being the go-to stream processing framework, leads to challenges with operational complexity, security, and infrastructure and management costs, according to Confluent.
“The true strength of using Apache Flink for stream processing empowers developers to create applications that instantly analyze and respond to real-time data, significantly enhancing responsiveness and user experience,” said Stewart Bond, research vice president at IDC. “Managed Apache Flink solutions can eliminate the complexities of infrastructure management while saving time and resources. Businesses must look for a Flink solution that seamlessly integrates with the tools, programming languages, and data formats they’re already using for easy implementation into business workflows.”
With support for Table API, Confluent makes Flink more accessible to developers using Java or Python programming languages. This joins Confluent’s existing support for Flink SQL, a powerful and intuitive tool for processing data streams, enabling developers to choose the best language for their use cases. This not only streamlines the coding process by leveraging enterprises’ integrated development environment (IDE) of choice, it also eases the process of debugging with an iterative strategy for data processing and streamlined CI/CD integration.
To help better secure Flink, Confluent is introducing a private networking capability to protect against unauthorized access and various cyberthreats. This creates a more robust layer of security and privacy between Flink and Kafka, safeguarding in-transit data and securing connections between clients and Flink. Additionally, this new capability simplifies secure network configuration, eliminating the need for extensive networking expertise, as well as empowering agile, secure stream processing by joining and processing data across different Kafka clusters.
“You can see private networking as almost like a second layer of security in addition to login and password, because the problem we have with any tool is if a password [or] a service account is stolen, people can access the data. And that's why many enterprises will require private networking,” explained JS Brunner, director of product management at Confluent. “So even if a password is stolen, malicious people will not be able to connect to the data because they will not be part of that private network.”
The next of Confluent’s latest capabilities is an extension for VS Code, one of the most popular solutions for code editing. Working to simplify the development process and limit context switching, the Confluent Extension for VS Code integrates directly into organizations’ preferred development environment. The extension powers streamlined topic management, and coding and debugging, as well as helping teams seamlessly manage cloud resources within VS Code.
Finally, Confluent is debuting Client-Side Field Level Encryption, a new security capability designed to help teams protect their most sensitive data. Client-Side Field Level Encryption allows customers to encrypt individual fields within their data streams, reducing the risk of unauthorized access. By encrypting data on the client side, Client-Side Field Level Encryption allows teams to improve the security of sensitive data, maintain flexible and granular access control, and reduce TCO and operational complexity by limiting the need for topic duplication, according to Confluent.
“What is exciting here is [that] we really help people to use Confluent as a full data stream platform. We help them make sure they can process and reach the data, and that [it] can be done in a very efficient and secure manner,” said Brunner. “We are helping to move all the processing [and] enrichment closer to the data so we can help them to get insight with low latency and share a single source of truth… [these new capabilities are] the pieces of the puzzle to help people to be successful at building a streaming data platform.”
Support for Table API is available in open preview and for testing and experimentation purposes. Private networking support is generally available on AWS for Enterprise and Dedicated clusters, with additional platform support coming soon. The Confluent Extension for VS Code that supports Kafka clients is available in early access, while the new Flink capabilities will be generally available later in 2024. Client-Side Field Level Encryption is currently in limited availability.
To learn more about Confluent’s latest capabilities, please visit https://www.confluent.io/.