Databricks, the company founded by the creators of the Apache Spark project, has introduced a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant Apache Spark, cloud-based platform. The announcement was made today at the 2016 Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent conference.
Having completed an audit with an independent CPA firm, Databricks says the platform is compliant with HIPAA security and breach notification rules with comprehensive technical safeguards covering access, encryption, auditing, and other controls.
The announcement was made today at the 2016 Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent conference.
Traditionally, the healthcare, pharma, and government industries face stringent data security requirements, such as Protected Health Information (PHI), which has complicated cloud adoption.
With documented HIPAA-compliance, the company says, its Spark platform enables healthcare and government organizations to perform analytics and build production applications with Apache Spark, while satisfying necessary regulatory requirements.
In addition, AWS Public Sector Partner Status assures Databricks’ expertise in delivering an Apache Spark platform to support government, education, and nonprofit missions. This announcement follows Databricks’ availability on AWS GovCloud (US) in June 2016. AWS GovCloud (US) helps U.S. Government agencies and customers migrate sensitive data in the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and strict compliance requirements, such as the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), FedRAMP Moderate and High, and DoD SRG Level 4 requirement.
The 2016 Spark Survey found that 61% of respondents are deploying Spark in the public cloud, and additionally, public cloud adoption in the healthcare and pharma industries grew by 39% over the last year, according to Ali Ghodsi, CEO and co-founder at Databricks, noting that the new security and compliance achievements validate the company’s expertise to help users in these industries deploy Apache Spark in the cloud.