Book excerpt: The digital age has presented an exponential growth in the amount of data available to individuals looking to draw conclusions based on given or collected information across industries. Challenges associated with the analysis, security, sharing, storage, and visualization of large and complex data sets continue to plague data scientists and analysts alike as traditional data processing applications struggle to adequately manage big data. Big Data: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a multi-volume compendium of research-based perspectives and solutions within the realm of large-scale and complex data sets. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this publication presents exhaustive coverage of crucial topics in the field of big data including diverse applications, storage solutions, analysis techniques, and methods for searching and transferring large data sets, in addition to security issues. Emphasizing essential research in the field of data science, this publication is an ideal reference source for data analysts, IT professionals, researchers, and academics.