Introduction
The rapid advancement in the use of information technology has also resulted in increased usage of databases for the storage of Information. Newer technologies such as data mining use the stored data in such a way that not only permits quick access to deeply buried information but they also allow for evaluation of the information from a new perspective. This information and evaluation are used by businesses to not only enhance their performance but also allow them to make a critical business decisions.
On the other hand, the wide use of the Internet has also prompted various businesses to integrate databases with their websites, which are not only used to store transactional information but also the customer’s personal information as well. This introduces the issues of the protection of privacy of the information stored on the database. Any unauthorized access to the database not only compromises the privacy of the user data but can also result in loss of confidential information about the organization if its use in a business environment is concerned (Thuraisingham).
Objective
The goal of this research will be to investigate the issues related to database management which could result in comprise of data privacy. It will also investigate the proposed solutions that have been presented in the prior literature.
Significance of the Research
Database privacy concerns have always been a discussion point in much of the literature available on the Internet related to databases. One of the major database privacy issues in business organizations has been the access to unavailable information through inference on accessible data (Thuraisingham). Various solutions have been proposed in literature such as a Purpose-Base Access Control System for Relational Databases (Byun and Li) and the Implementation of Database inference controller (Thuraisingham, Ford and Collins). Privacy also becomes an issue when information needs to be shared between two databases.
One of the solutions presented in the available literature to resolve this issue is a method for minimal information sharing across multiple databases by developing a new protocol (Agrawal, Evfimievski, and Srikant). Sharing of data with anonymity has also been discussed in the literature. Latanya Sweeney, in her paper, has proposed a solution to this issue which is to make the data of the customer k-anonymous before presenting it into the public domain (Sweeney). In addition, the recent advancement of technologies related to mobile devices has also brought to light privacy concerns in a location-independent environment (Mokbel).
The focus of this research will be on the recent issues related to database privacy which includes the design of an architecture that could deal with issues related to privacy in location-based applications while introducing minimum complexity and overhead (Mokbel), as well as the design of new generalized data folding techniques which would improve the privacy of stored data in data warehouses (Kozielski and Wrembel).
Scope of the Project
The focus of this project is limited to discussing recent issues related to database privacy. This has been done to keep the research focused and to make it comprehensive by keeping it within the limits of available resources such as time and budget.
Procedure
Two methodologies are used to conduct research, generally. These are positivistic and interpretative. In a positivistic approach, many variables in a realistic situation can be involved that make it very difficult to draw firm conclusions. Therefore, in a positivistic approach, it is necessary to control all the extraneous factors that might affect the result, to draw valid conclusions. On the other hand, the Interpretative approach involves a deep understanding of the problem which results in the most valid conclusion, and any control on the factors invalidate results.
Selected Research Design
The conclusion of this research will be based on the deep understanding of the privacy issues related to the databases and the solutions that have been proposed for them. Therefore the method used for this research will be interpretative.
Primary Research
Primary research will be conducted by surveys and interviews of IT security managers, database administrators as well as ethical experts.
Secondary Research
Secondary research will be done by using the literature available in the form of books and articles which can be accessed through the Internet and the library.
Research Hypothesis
Privacy issues in databases present a significant threat to organizations as well as individuals and the advancement of technologies introduces a new aspect of database privacy issue.
Structure of the Report
The report will begin by providing an introduction to the topic and its background in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 will present a literature review and the description of research methodologies will be presented in Chapter 3. The finding of this research will constitute Chapter 4 and the Conclusions in Chapter 5 will bring the report to an end.
Works Cited
Agrawal, Rakesh, Alexendre Evfimievski and Ramakrishnan Srikant. “Information Sharing across Private Databases.” Proceedings of the 2003 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data. San Diago, California: ACM, 2003. 86 – 97.
Byun, Ji-Won and Ninghui Li. “Purpose Based Access Control for Privacy Protection in Relational Database Systems.” Proceedings of the tenth ACM symposium on Access control models and technologies. Stockholm, Sweden: ACM, 2005. 102 – 110.
Mokbel, Mohamed. “Towards Privacy-Aware Location-Based Database Servers.” Proceedings of 22nd International Conference, Data Engineering Workshops. IEEE, 2006. 93.
Sweeney, Latanya. “Achieving k-anonymity Privacy Protection using Generalization and Suppression.” International Journal on Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-based Systems (2002).
Thuraisingham, Bhavani. Database and Applications Security: Integrating Information Security and Data Management. CRC Press, 2005.
Thuraisingham, Bhavani, et al. “Design and Implementation of a Database Inference Controller.” Data & Knowledge Engineering (1993): 271-297.
Kozielski, Stainslaw and Robert Wrembel. New Trends in Data Warehousing and Data Analysis: Volume 3 of Annals of information systems. Springer, 2008.