In this article, we will discuss the overview of computer-based controls and will discuss computer-based control available in a multi-user database environment in detail. Let’s discuss it one by one.
Overview :
The different forms of countermeasure to threats on the computer systems from physical controls to the managerial procedure. In spite of the range of the computer-based controls that are pre-existing, it is nothing that the security of DBMS is good as that of an operating system, due to close associate among them. Today, a lot of computer-based controls are available in a multi-user database environment.
Computer-based control available in the database :
Most of them are as follows.
- Authorization and Authentication
- Access controls
- Views
- Backup and Recovery
- Integrity
- Encryption and Decryption
- RAID tools
Let’s discuss it one by one.
Authorization and Authentication :
- The granting of rights or privileges that enables a subject(user) to have legitimate access to a system or a system’s object, is called Authorization.
- Authorization controls can be built into the software and govern not only what system species the user can access, but also what the user may do with it.
- The process of authentication involves the authentication of subjects requesting access to objects.
- Authentication is the process by which users are identified by the database management system and prove their identity to see the database.
- To authenticate a user in the database environment, two elements are required as follows.
- User ID
- Authentication token
- The user ID allows the security component to identify the user and by supplying the correct authentication token (a password known only by the user), the user identity is verified. After successful authentication of a user, the authentication user ID is mapped to an authentication ID.
Access controls :
- One of the way to make access controls for a database system is based on the granting and revoking of privileges. A privilege allows a user to create or access some database objects like-table, views, index etc…
Views :
- The main concept of this mechanism is to provide a flexible and most powerful security mechanism by hiding parts of the database from certain users.
- A View is a virtual table.
- A view did not store any data any own, but it is like a window through which data from tables can be viewed or changed.
- Base tables are said that the tables on which a view is a base.
Backup and recovery :
- The process of periodically copying of the database and its log file to offline storage media is called Backup.
- In the log file, the backup copy and the information captured are used to restore the database to the present state.
Integrity :
- In a database system, data integrity means the completeness, correctness and consistency of data.
- It is another form of database protection. In a relational database system, data integrity can be achieved using integrity rules or constraints.
- Whatever changes made to the database there is no loss of data consistency.
Encryption and Decryption :
- Encryption is a technique used to protect sensitive data such as credit card numbers that is being transmitted via some types of communication network.
- Encryption can be used to provide additional protection for sensitive portions of a database where the normal security mechanism of the DBMS is not adequate.
- Plain text is said if the data is not encrypted in encryption.
- Cipher-text is said if the data is encrypted in encryption.
- Encryption is said if the process is converting the plain text to cipher-text.
- Decryption is said if the process is converting the cipher text to plain text.
RAID tools :
- RAID can be expressed as “Redundant Array of Independent Disk”. The hardware that the DBMS is running on must be fault-tolerant, means the database management system must continue to operate even if one of the hardware components fails.
- RAID originally stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk, but more recently the “I” in RAID has come to stands for Independent.
- There are a number of different disk configurations with RAID, termed RAID levels as follows.
| S.No. | RAID level | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | RAID 0 | Non-redundant. |
| 2. | RAID 1 | Mirrored |
| 3. | RAID 2 | Error-correcting codes |
| 4. | RAID 3 | Bit- Interleaved parity |
| 5. | RAID 4 | Block Interleaved parity |
| 6. | RAID 5 | Block-Interleaved distributed party |
| 7. | RAID 6 | It is an extension of leave 5 |
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