Database Security and Statistical Database Security

Abstract

In this article we will present an introduction to issues relevant to database security and statistical database security. We will briefly cover various security models, elaborate on how data analysis in data warehouses (DWH) might compromise an individual’s privacy, and explain which safeguards can be used to prevent attacks. In most companies, databases are an essential part of IT infrastructure since they store critical business data. In the last two decades, databases have been used to process increasing amounts of transactional data, such as, a complete account of a person’s purchases from a retailer or connection data from calls made on a cell phone. As soon as this data became available from transactional databases and online transactional processing (OLTP) became well established, the next logical step was to use the knowledge contained in the vast amounts of data. Today, data warehouses (DWH) store aggregated data in an optimal way to serve queries related to business analysis.