Distributed Database Issues With Security

atabase is a collection of data which describes the activities of one or more organizations in a well-defined structure and the structure of a database is specific and it has a purpose. Database Management System (DBMS) is used to control or organize the data in a database. Database Management System (DBMS) is also used for maintaining large collections of data. Distributed database can be defined as a collection of various databases which can be stored at different computer network locations. In this paper we discuss about Distributed Databases, their advantages and disadvantages.

Due to the internet and E-commerce, data security is even more important due to the possibility of hackers, viruses, and malware.

“The practice of keeping data protected from corruption and unauthorized access” is known as data security (SpamLaw, 2011). The focal point of data security is the protection of

While all of these technologies have enabled exciting changes and opportunities for businesses, they have also created a unique set of challenges for business managers. Chief among all concerns about technology is the issue of information security. It seems to be almost a weekly occurrence to see a news article about yet another breach of security and loss of sensitive data. Many people will remember high profile data breaches from companies such as T.J Maxx, Boston Market, Sports Authority, and OfficeMax. In the case of T.J. Maxx, a data breach resulted in the loss of more than 45 million credit and debit card numbers. In many of these incidents, the root cause is a lack of adequate security practices within the company. The same technologies that enable managers can also be used against them. Because of this, businesses must take appropriate steps to ensure their data remains secure and their communications remain

What is a database? According to our book, it’s an organized collection of logically related data. The information collected in a database can be effortlessly administered and accessed. However, with each database there is a concern of security. According to our book, the goal of database security is to protect and prevent data from unintentional or deliberate threats to its integrity and accessibility. The database environment has grown more complex, with distributed databases located on client/server architectures and personal computers as well as mainframes. Access to data has become more open through the Internet and corporate intranets and from mobile computing devices. As a result, managing data security has become more difficult and time-consuming.

Our data is never at rest. Even when organizations depend on their database for storage, there is always copies of data somewhere else to be found. To service our men and women in the Army Reserves, data has to be manipulated at the local computer and then sent back to be stored back on the database. The very moment that data is moved and stored on a local machine for it to be manipulated is also the moment that the data is most vulnerable. Despite the concerted efforts to ensure data confidentiality the overall security depends efforts put forth by the weakest link. The insider threat is one of the hardest risk to mitigate, mainly due to their initial need to legitimately data access.

The segregation of data is also critical to access controls applied to the data. To insure successful access controls in a cloud environment, with co-located data, the ability to determine who can access the data must reside with the client, in both enterprise and private user applications (Subashini and Kavitha 2011). Security and privacy of cloud-based data is only effective through agreed upon application of policy and governance against the underlying technology architecture.

One of the most important jobs in a data processing organization, other than the actual processing of data, is securing the information from the time the original data is entered until the end of the process. Businesses trust data processing companies with valuable business information from customer information lists to sensitive business documents so being a trustworthy processing center is critical. In order to ensure the safety and security of client’s information, data processing companies must have top-notch security in place from the locks on the door to the people they hire.

Various institutions worry about losing their critical, highly restricted and confidential data. The fear of information loss is amplified within an organization especially when their critical data is hosted externally, for example through the use of cloud models. In order to address data loss fear that these organizations will suffer, a security structure called “Data Loss Prevention (DLP)” was developed, this product is available as various products within the information technology field. The most frequently used among these products are, McAfee, Symantec and so on. Each of the following DLP products is used to discover and deter data leakage.

Database security mainly concerns with protecting data and the applications of the databases that are stored. In the realms of Information security and computer security, the database security is the special topic. Database administrators may also be responsible for misconfiguration of controls within the software where database is stored. Database monitoring is also an important security layer. Electronic signatures and encryption and many other new technique are introduced to protect databases. Over the years, the database security has developed a very large number of different techniques to assure integrity, availability, and data confidentiality. However, there are also threats, which are related to these databases. The threats take advantage of the loop wholes in these databases. As discussed earlier in the outline about how this security issue has brought huge problems in the company. Databases are the integral part of the company because it contains a lot of sensitive information about the company and even the information of their clients is stored in these databases. Therefore, their security is of high importance and each company in the market should consider it, as the world is becoming a data oriented.1

Imperva provides user rights management and the identification of excessive rights over sensitive data. With effective user rights management, customers can reduce the risk of a data breach. User Rights Management for Databases (URMD) enables security, database administrators, and audit teams to focus on rights associated with sensitive data. Utilizing URMD, associations can prove compliance with guidelines such as SOX, HIPPA and diminish the risk of data breaches.

With advances in technology constantly happening, it can be hard to keep up with all of the latest trends. If organizations cannot keep up with the latest trends, it can lead to flaws in their security. Any flaws in security can have a detrimental effect on an organization’s database. Almost every organization has some sort of database, whether it is for maintaining customers, inventory, or vital information.

As databases and technology have evolved, Elmasri and Navathe point out that increasingly complex data structures for modeling to meet the needs of the more advanced and larger databases that were also beginning to include newer data types (2016). As stated before, with more complex databases, there are more vulnerabilities in security that need to be planned for and mitigated wherever possible. A DBMS is responsible for designing the methods in which data recovery and security is handled, while tools are used within database modeling that facilitate modeling, system design, and improve performance (Elmasri & Navathe, 2016). When applying these tools to database creation, security should always be considered in each step of modeling and creating the database. The DBMS provides a security and authorization subsystem to the DBA so that they can use it to create accounts and specify account restrictions (Elmasri & Navathe, 2016).

This study report aims at identifying the possible security challenges for Distributed database systems and suggests some of the possible solutions for the challenges identified.

The concept of data security is not new to anyone. It refers to those technologies which have been discovered so as to keep the important data safe and out of reach from anyone undesirable. This has been done so as to keep the data safe from any intruders who could get into the computer system through hacking. As a result of advancements in the field of information technology, most data is kept on desktops or in the clouds. With the help of such techniques, any unauthorized person could be kept out of a personal computer so that no one has access to any important data. Apart from stealing important data, there is also a chance that any data could be forged and changed so as to affect the authenticity of available information (Berman, 2016). This could not only affect organizations but also individuals since the stolen or modified data could be important for them. For this purpose, the name data or information security came into existence. This branch of computer sciences started with the emergence of needing to keep data safe. The concept has been shoot and miss in areas of success in keeping data away from prying eyes. However, there have been some cases as to where security did not work. In this paper, I will examine the case between Apple and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.