Question

CMIS 320 Project 1

Write a justification paper, of at least 2 pages, to your boss explaining how a relational database solution can be applied to a current business problem or area for improvement. Assume that your boss knows nothing about relational database theory. The goal of this paper is to obtain your boss's approval to proceed with your stated project. Do not focus on the technical aspects of a database management system. Focus on how the information will be captured, manipulated, managed, and shared, and the value the database brings to the organization.

Include brief examples of how other industries (both domestic and international) have successfully used relational databases to increase efficiency.

Answer 1

First, we will explain what actually database and data warehousing are and then we will dive deep into how data backup and recovery of the data is been done as it is one of the major activities that is being completed by each and every organization that make use of this technology.

Database & Database Warehousing:

If we look into the uses of the databases it can be looked as the blessing to the whole IT industry without which many things would be next to impossible or would take a lot of headaches to complete the requirements. I will discuss below in detail about the scenario.

• Looking at the past events in the security issues in DBMS it is clear it has cost the world and it's users a lot and if we are to count the money behind the loss it would feel like a far more worse.
• Yes, there are always security issues, but this is how everything in this universe works. There is nothing in the universe which doesn't consist of flaws and DBMS techniques are also one of them.
• So, rather than looking at its disadvantages or threats, we must look at the positive side of the technology and focus more on getting the technology better in the security with the experiences that we get from staying in the field for a long time.
• I know, it sounds crazy to let attackers hack and then just make changes, it is not what we need in a world which is more dependent on all the online transactions and data which is been kept in some cloud.
• There are certain ways in which experts are fighting these issues so that they could diminish the effects of such attacks and improvising is the only factor which will help us in moving forward in the IT industry.
• It is the greatest threat to individual privacy this is an absolute fact with proofs of so many data leaks happening in a certain interval of times. There are also many data leaks which have affected the clients of the company a lot more for which company had to pay a lot of losses.
• The database is a blessing if we keep it up to the mark so that no one is going to make our security weak or even try to hack our systems. Hence, this is the things which we must ensure while using technologies.

Thus, security is always a concern when it comes to any of the IT technologies, but by looking at these vulnerabilities we can't stop using those services which we need the most and also in which we are capable of improving the security of.

Policies to backup data & secure them:

• Data is one of the most crucial things nowadays, as it is the only thing needed for manipulating requests and for which companies are paying billions of dollars to get effective information.
• We must not neglect such important cases and there must be some policies so that such data are been secure and also ready to survive attacks or any disaster that can happen.
• Hence, for such purpose making the backup of the data is very important. The backup of the data is to be made on a daily basis or every time some important data is been updated.
• For, this the talent pool in the company must be educated about network security and also about how to clean the data to store only the data which is important for the company.
• Creating a robust policy for handling of sensitive data is one of the most important steps in backing up data. The data to be backed up must be ready to be done a backup.
• Encrypting data before doing the backup is one of the most important things because if the data is been stolen it must remain confidential as it will become very tough for the attackers to get the meaningful data.
• Introducing Identity & Access Management also ensures that the data is been saved securely. It enables many services through which we can ensure that the security is unbreakable one of which is SS0(Single Sign-On).
• The last and important thing from my side for backing up and security of the data would be creating a strategy for surviving the data breach for a network of an organization.

Hence, these are the procedures and general policies that one must create or follow to backup and secure the company's data.

Data Recovery:

• It is a technique of getting back the data which has been lost from a particular interval of time. This can be done by various techniques in data recovery. Some of the most important aspects of the data recovery are what we are going to talk about.
• So, firstly getting the data backup is one of the most important things so that, whenever a data is been destroyed due to any of the reasons it can be managed accordingly. The managed data will be looked after.
• The data recovery can also be accomplished with the help of various other strategies which companies use to store the data like, some organizations save their data in cloud storage some of them save in the different servers which are been placed somewhere else.
• A data disaster can happen anytime and anywhere it is our job to secure our data using various other techniques and strategies so that the data is not been destroyed. It is one of the major techniques in data recovery.

Hence, these are the techniques of the data recovery and performing data backup is one of the most important things to do while dealing with lots of data which cannot be lost.

Activities in Maintenance of DBMS:

• The typical activities in the maintenance of the DBMS its utilities and applications are as follows:
  • First and foremost important activity is to monitor the system to ensure the database is up and running perfectly.
  • Next, is to do a full backup of the database so that there is no redundancy in all the locations where the database backup is being saved.
  • The next step is to perform a live replication so that we can read slave and hot fallback with the cluster.
  • To check the storage is it enough to make the database running for the rest of the time.
  • To perform a check on the archival strategy so that the online transaction database isn't building up too much over time.
  • Running queries for a long time so that we can understand what is happening in the database index wise and when will it be hitting a tipping point.

Hence, these are some of the activities which must be checked while doing maintenance of the database.

Yes, obviously we must consider application performance tuning to be the part of the maintenance activities. The main reason behind it is as follows:

• It will help us to know whether the application is being worked perfectly and up to what regressions are they failing to perform as expected. This will help us in finding out the limitations of our applications so that changes can be made accordingly.
• It will also keep us posted with certain changes in the application when the inputs are not as expected to make it a part of testing so that nothing can be overloaded when the application goes live.

Hence, these are some of the points we must remember while performing database maintenance.

Data Corruption Vulnerabilities:

When it comes to data corruption these are the major vulnerabilities that can occur due to the wrong database codes implemented either in MySQL or ORACLE databases. This can happen to any database.

• Buffer Overflow:
  • The buffer overflow vulnerability is one of the most basic and dangerous vulnerabilities which occurs in the systems due to the insufficient memory management and wrong codes.
  • The main drawback of having this vulnerability is that it will freeze the system and let the attacker do the things he wants to do which can lead to remote code execution and then, later on, can do anything the attacker wishes to.
• SQL Injection:
  • It is wrong references given in the databases and manipulating a certain level of database information which gives access to the attacker in which they can hack the system authentication process.
  • The SQL Injection is one of the most dangerous vulnerability and none of the websites must have this threat in their system because it can cause the downfall of the whole website.

Types of backup:

• One can easily save all the work done with the help of some other removable devices like hard-drive, pen-drive, floppy disks, CD, etc.
• Saving a certain amount of data in these removable devices will make the data portable and available anytime and anywhere. The data we can save in such devices is limited which is the major drawback.
• With the help of these devices, there are many risks that need to be calculated. Firstly the major risk is that the devices can be lost which will be a major risk here.
• The second backup method can be saving all the data in the cloud or any similar online space provider. This method is way too costly as compared to the first method.
• The cloud data can be accessed from anywhere and anytime which will also reduce the risk of losing the data as it will be saved in a server which is been monitored for maintenance.
• The risks that are involved in this backup process is that the security of the data is a major issue as it is available on the Internet it can be easily misused if a data breach takes place.
• The data is always on the internet and if not secured properly then there might be certain consequences to the backup.

Hence, these are the ways in which backup can be fruitful to the organizations.