The Weak Link in Distributed Data Base Security

Abstract

The architecture of data bases has changed significantly in recent years in response to changes in the needs of users and in the underlying technologies. Changes in microprocessor design have made powerful personal workstations commodity items; network and multimedia capabilities have become commonplace. The development of innovative distributed data bases is one of the major consequences of changes in these enabling technologies. The period of 1980 to 1988 was the era of the centralized data base. Data base administrators extolled the virtues of centralizing data and of removing physical and logical redundancies. Large integrated IMS, IDMS, and other data bases were developed at great effort and expense. Software vendors, in turn, developed new tools and techniques for securing these centralized data bases. For example, extensions to such major access control software packages as RACF and CA-ACF2 were introduced. The era of the distributed data base, which began in 1988 and continues to the present, has necessitated the development of new control tools and techniques.