Security Issues in NoSQL Databases

Security Issues in NoSQL Databases
Lior Okman
Deutsche Telekom Laboratories at Ben-Gurion University,
Beer-Sheva, Israel
Nurit Gal-Oz, Yaron Gonen, Ehud Gudes
Deutsche Telekom Laboratories at Ben-Gurion University, and Dept of Computer Science,
Ben-Gurion University,
Beer-Sheva, Israel
Jenny Abramov
Deutsche Telekom Laboratories at Ben-Gurion University and
Dept of Information Systems Eng.
Ben-Gurion University,
Beer-Sheva, Israel
Abstract—The recent advance in cloud computing and distributed web applications has created the need to store large amount of data in distributed databases that provide high availability and scalability. In recent years, a growing number of companies have adopted various types of non-relational databases, commonly referred to as NoSQL databases, and as the applications they serve emerge, they gain extensive market interest.
These new database systems are not relational by definition and therefore they do not support full SQL functionality. Moreover, as opposed to relational databases they trade consistency and security for performance and scalability. As increasingly sensitive data is being stored in NoSQL databases, security issues become growing concerns.
This paper reviews two of the most popular NoSQL databases
(Cassandra and MongoDB) and outlines their main security features and problems.
Index Terms—NoSQL; Security; Cassandra; MongoDB;
I. INTRODUCTION
The recent advance in cloud computing and distributed web applications has created the need to store large amount of data in distributed databases that provide high availability and scalability.
In recent years, a growing number of companies have adopted various types of non-relational databases, commonly referred to as NoSQL databases and as the applications they serve emerge, they gained extensive market interest. Different
NoSQL databases take different approaches. Their primary advantage is that, unlike relational databases, they handle