BigID Co-Founder and CEO Dimitri Sirota acknowledges his company is not a be-all, end-all solution to tackle an organization's every need. It is why he said BigID has always been philosophically open-minded to collaborating with a wide variety of partners. 

This ideology was presented in the announcement of its App Development Framework last month, which allowed for the creation of custom applications on top of the vendor's data discovery platform. 

As the framework was developed and released, Sirota said BigID identified the natural next step it should take. The vendor announced it launched the BigID App Marketplace, a store where customers can purchase apps to assist with different tasks.

Users can go to the marketplace and select the apps they wish to purchase. After they have made their decisions, users are given license keys that allow them to use the apps immediately.

Sirota said the marketplace will start with apps created by BigID, including offerings to handle data rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act and EU General Data Protection Regulation, data remediation, third-party data sharing, consent lifecycle governance and dark web breach monitoring.

While the marketplace will begin with BigID-developed products, Sirota said third parties can use the App Development Framework to create their own offerings to be listed alongside the vendor's apps. Third parties will not be charged to have their products listed in the marketplace.

Sirota expects the first wave of third-party developed apps to hit the marketplace around Q4 2020. He added each product will be screened based on several criteria before it is approved, such as functionality and user experience.

The principle BigID may have its closest eye on is security. Sirota believes BigID's employees can properly assess the security measures in each app, as it has security professionals on staff and hired individuals who have experience developing app marketplaces.

A lot of moving parts had to be addressed to ensure the launch goes smoothly, and that ultimately resulted in the decision to stagger the marketplace's development.

"We realize we need to take extra care, especially as it pertains to security. We do security by design, very similar to privacy by design. We have a (chief information security officer) on the board of directors, and we just brought in Informatica’s ex-CISO," Sirota said. "We take security extremely seriously, and we are going to take very careful steps. It’s the reason why we didn’t announce the third-party apps right now. We are starting with everything we have full control over and then we are going to make sure we do everything correctly."

Security vendors have been among the first to express interest in developing apps for the marketplace, and Sirota expects to draw in third parties from other verticals, as well.

Sirota wants the marketplace to be open to everyone, including third parties offering products that overlap with areas already covered by BigID.

For the marketplace to take off, Sirota said BigID cannot close it off to anyone who produces an app that reaches the standards it has established.

"We made a decision that we are going to be open. We are going to accommodate companies that have some overlap with us. We don’t care," Sirota said. "We are philosophically going to take that open architecture approach and let organizations build additional integrations on top of BigID, even if there are places where we do the same thing. We are fine with it. We know it’s the right decision for enterprises."

Siorta also believes it is the right decision for the current state of the world. With the COVID-19 pandemic showing no signs of slowing down, Sirota said there is not much of an appetite in services where users feel "locked-in." 

It is why he feels the marketplace can be an opportunity for privacy professionals to obtain products to help with their compliance efforts and a chance for third parties to use the resources BigID provides.

"We’ve always been philosophically open-minded to partners. We believe if you want to get value from an IT-specific piece of infrastructure, you need to make what you have available to other systems," Sirota said. "We are not going to be everything to everybody. We know that. That’s why we built the app store. We realize it takes a village to deliver on all of the functionality an organization wants." 

Photo by Pathum Danthanarayana on Unsplash