OpenTDF (Trusted Data Format) is a foundational platform that allows you to build and integrate “forever control” of your or your users’ respective data into new and existing applications.
OpenTDF includes encryption, but it is much more than that. It includes additional cryptographically secured metadata that can ensure policy control throughout the lifecycle of data. Imagine being able to grant or revoke, “turn off”, access to your data at any time, even if it is not contained within your own network or application anymore.
The concept of forever control stems from an increasingly common concept known as zero trust. Zero trust removes the implicit trust that many of us have granted to our data throughout its historical lifecycle. Zero trust says don’t release the data unless there is a way to maintain control over it.
While the idea of zero trust sounds great, making it happen is a bit more difficult. That’s where OpenTDF comes in. By implementing or integrating OpenTDF into applications and projects, the appropriate owner of a respective piece of data can maintain control over that data forever, or at least as long as the data has not yet completed its intended lifecycle.
The OpenTDF project was first released in 2022 when the creators realized a real and pressing need in the community - the ability to protect data wherever it goes. This critical pillar of zero-trust and data-centric security, and the rising needs of data-centric interoperability, have fueled the OpenTDF team to build extensible, reliable, and easy-to-use software to create value out-of-the-box while also providing a clear path to production-scale deployments.
To this end, the OpenTDF project has gotten a refresh - you can find details of how to get started on Github. The project refresh is in its early stages, so if you’d like to keep up to date with the latest in OpenTDF, please give the new Platform Github repository a Star and a Watch to get notifications about the latest development. Please also feel free to submit issues or discussion topics there - we’d love to hear from you!
Through the sponsorship of Virtru and its partners, the OpenTDF project has been meeting the needs of customers across industries and use cases. Check out Virtru Data Security Platform for more.
Virtru, the sponsor of the OpenTDF developer community, would love to hear from you!
We’re developers, too, and as we mature the project, we’re curious what you’re building, and what kind of problems you may be encountering or are trying to solve.
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