Security and Privacy Implications on Database Systems in Big Data Era: A Survey

Abstract

For over many decades, relational database model has been considered as the leading model for data storage and management. However, as the Big Data explosion has generated a large volume of data, alternative models like NoSQL and NewSQL have emerged. With the advancement of communication technology, these database systems have given the potential to change the existing architecture from centralized mechanism to distributed in nature, to deploy as cloud-based solutions. Though all of these evolving technologies mostly focus on performance guarantees, it is still being a major concern how these systems can ensure the security and privacy of the information they handle. Different datastores support different types of integrated security mechanisms, however, most of the non-relational database systems have overlooked the security requirements of modern Big Data applications. This paper reviews security implementations in today's leading database models giving more emphasis on security and privacy attributes. A set of standard security mechanisms have been identified and evaluated based on different security classifications. Further, it provides a thorough review and a comprehensive analysis on maturity of security and privacy implementations in these database models along with future directions/enhancements so that data owners can decide on most appropriate datastore for their data-driven Big Data applications.