Dr. Aly, O.
Computer Science
Introduction
The purpose of this discussion is to discuss and analyze the relationship between performance and security and the impact of security implementation on the performance. The discussion also discusses and analyzes the balance between security and performance to provide good operational result in both categories. The discussion begins with the characteristics of the distributed environment including a database to have a good understanding of the complexity of the distributed environment, the influential factors on the distributed system. The discussion discusses and analyzes the security challenges in the distributed system and the negative correlation between security and performance in the distributed system.
Distributed Environment Challenges
The distributed system involves components located at networked computers communicating and coordinating their actions only by passing messages. The distributed system includes concurrency of components, lack of a global clock and independent failures of components. The challenges of the distributed system arise from the heterogeneity of the system components, openness to allow components to be added or replaced, security, scalability, failure handling, concurrency of components, transparency and providing quality of service (Coulouris, Dollimore, & Kindberg, 2005).
Example of distributed systems includes the Web Search whose task is to index the entire content of the world wide web, containing a wide range of information types and styles including web pages, multimedia sources and scanned books. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) is another example of the distributed system. Users interact through the Internet with a persistent virtual world using MMOGs. The financial trading market is another example of the distributed system using real-time access to a wide range of information sources such as current share prices and trends, economic and political development (Coulouris et al., 2005).
Influential Factors in Distributed Systems
The distributed system is going through significant changes due to some trends. The first influential trend in the distributed system involves the emergence of pervasive networking technology. The emergence of ubiquitous computing coupled with the desire to support user mobility in a distributed system is another factor that is impacting the distributed system. The increasing demand for multi-media services is another influential trend in the distributed system. The last influential trend is the view of the distributed systems as a utility. All these trends have a significant impact on the distributed system.
Security Challenge in Distributed System
Security is among some challenges in the distributed system. Many of the information resources which are stored in a distributed system have a high value to their users. The security of such information is critically important. Information Security involves confidentiality to protect against disclosure to unauthorized users, integrity to protect against alteration or corruption, and availability to protect against interferences with the means of accessing the resources. The security must comply with the CIA Triad for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (Abernathy & McMillan, 2016; Coulouris et al., 2005; Stewart, Chapple, & Gibson, 2015). The security risks are associated with allowing access to resources in an intranet within the organization. Although the firewalls can be used to form barriers between department around the intranet, restricting access to the authorized users only, the proper use of the resource by users within the intranet and on the Internet cannot be ensured and guaranteed.
In the distributed system, users send requests to access data managed by the server which involves sending information in messages over a network. Examples include a user can send the credit card information in electronic commerce or bank, or a doctor can request access to patient’s information. The challenge is to send sensitive information in a message over a network in a secure manner. Moreover, the challenge is to ensure the recipient is the right user. Such challenges can be met by using different security techniques such as encryption techniques. However, there are two security challenges which have not been resolved yet; The Denial of Service (DoS) and the Security of Mobile Code. The DoS occurs when the service is disrupted, and users cannot access their data. Currently, the DoS attacks are encountered by attempting to catch and punish the perpetrators after the event, which is a reactive solution and not proactive. The security of mobile code is another open challenge. Example of the mobile code is an image is sent which might be a source of DoS or access to a local resource (Coulouris et al., 2005).
Negative Correlation between Security and Performance
The performance challenges of the Distribute System emerge from the more complex algorithm required for the distributed environment than for the centralized system. The complexity of the algorithm emerges from the requirement of replicated database systems, fully interconnected network, network delays represented by the simplistic queuing models, and so forth. Security is one of the most important issues in the distributed system. Security requires layers of security measure to protect the system from intruders. These layers of protection have a negative impact on the performance of the distributed environment. Moreover, data and information in transit or storage become vulnerable to attacks. There are four types of storage systems Server Attached Redundant Array of Independent Disk (RAID), centralized RAID, Network Attached Storage (NAS), and Storage Area Network (SAN). NAS and SAN have different performance because they have different techniques for transferring the data. NAS uses TCP/IP protocol to transfer the data across multiple devices, while SAN uses SCSI setup on fiber channels. Thus, NAS can be implemented on any physical network supporting TCP/IP such as Ethernet, FDDI, or ATM. However, SAN can be implemented only fiber channel. SAN has better performance than NAS because TCP has higher overhead and SCSI faster than the TCP/IP network (Firdhous, 2012).
References
Abernathy, R., & McMillan, T. (2016). CISSP Cert Guide: Pearson IT Certification.
Coulouris, G. F., Dollimore, J., & Kindberg, T. (2005). Distributed systems: concepts and design: Pearson education.
Firdhous, M. (2012). Implementation of security in distributed systems-a comparative study. arXiv preprint arXiv:1211.2032.
Stewart, J., Chapple, M., & Gibson, D. (2015). ISC Official Study Guide. CISSP Security Professional Official Study Guide (7th ed.): Wiley.
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