Distributed Database Architecture for Data Privacy Using Partitioning Algorithm (A Case Study of Social Security and National Insurance Trust)
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Date
2012-12-09
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Abstract
Over the past three decades, the trend in computing, database, networking and internet
technology has enabled the collection of data as well as the access to and the utilization of this data in a way that was previously unimaginable. Each individual may exist in
numerous databases in different geographical location from government agencies to
purchases online to confidential medical records and financial information. Because this
data is digitalized, it is stored in a way that is cheap, easy to locate, searched using
sophisticated queries and easy to make perfect copies. Due to potential abuse and
vulnerability of the data subject, this trend has raised data privacy concerns all over the
world and motivated governments to pass laws and legislation that seek to protect the
individual’s personal data. But government legislation alone is not enough and needs to
be supported by technical solutions. Previous solutions have been based on data
encryption causing a large overhead in query processing. Other approaches using
distributed database techniques for secured database management services combine it
with data encryption or some form of data encoding. This study proposes an
architecture using database distribution technique without traditional encryption
methods and a vertical partitioning algorithm for a near optimal partitioning of a
database schema across multiple servers. The SSNIT database schema and legislation
passed by governments representing five continents were used to provide a model to (1)identify privacy requirements from existing government legislation, (2) model
confidentiality constraints from the privacy requirement, (3) feed the algorithm with the
confidentiality constraints to come up with the vertical partitions. The challenge of
singleton data confidentiality constraints and how it can be handled in the proposed
architecture without any form of data encoding is discussed.
Description
A Thesis Submitted To the Department Of Computer Science,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Information Technology,May-2012
Keywords
Database, Confidentiality constraints, Singleton constraints, Government legislation, Partitioning algorithm, Data privacy, Distributed architecture, Data subject