Potential Security Issues in a Peer-to-Peer Network from a Database Perspective

Abstract

Computing strategies have constantly undergone changes, from being completely centralized to client-servers and now to peer-to-peer networks. Databases on peer-to-peer networks offer significant advantages in terms of providing autonomy to data owners, to store and manage the data that they work with and, at the same time, allow access to others. The issue of database security becomes a lot more complicated and the vulnerabilities associated with databases are far more pronounced when considering databases on a peer-to-peer network. Issues associated with database security in a peer-to-peer environment could be due to file sharing, distributed denial of service, and so forth, and trust plays a vital role in ensuring security. The components of trust in terms of authentication, authorization, and encryption offer methods to ensure security.