Gazzang, a vendor providing data security and operational diagnostics solutions to enterprises, has received certification for its zNcrypt product on CDH4, Cloudera‘s Distribution Including Apache Hadoop Version 4.

Gazzang zNcrypt on CDH4 protects data by transparently encrypting and securing information written to disk to provide enterprise-class security to customers using Cloudera’s Hadoop distribution. So far, zNcrypt is the only encryption and key management product certified on CDH4.

Encryption seems to be top-of-mind lately — and that’s certainly a good thing when it comes to data being transmitted to and from (and stored on) the public cloud, especially. Last week, CipherCloud announced its own cloud encryption application, Connect AnyApp.

With more enterprises starting to adopt Cloudera’s Apache Hadoop distribution for their own cloud initiatives, customers are no doubt looking for ways to ensure the security of all that data being sent into both public and private clouds. Cloudera currently has tens of thousands of nodes in production.

“Cloudera is helping enterprises realize the promise of big data, and is changing the way organizations — from financial services to health care to social media — solve problems and meet their business goals,” said Michael Harper, vice president of worldwide sales and alliances at Gazzang, in a prepared statement. “Together, we are giving organizations peace of mind that the data powering their search queries and analytics is secure, confidential, available and high-performing.”

Gazzang may not be a name familiar to most. The company first launched its products a couple of years ago, and it has been relatively silent in the media. When it comes to encryption, the real question is: Does it do the job? Can it compete with other encryption vendors, even if it has found its way to the CDH4 space first?

As a relatively unknown vendor at this point, it will have to convince customers of its results and show off its successes. It has embraced the channel sales model, though, and is working with a handful of what the company calls “customer engagement partners.”

“Enterprise-class Hadoop clusters require enterprise-class security. Data-at-rest encryption and key management from Gazzang enable Cloudera customers to embrace the potential of big data while maximizing data security,” said Tim Stevens, vice president of business and corporate development at Cloudera, in a prepared statement.