Explicit Data Encryption Architecture for Cassandra

The recent advances in distributed database applications has created the need for large storage which should be scalable and should not be restricted to schema constraints. In this move many companies are moving from relational database systems to Non-relational database systems, particularly known as NoSQL databases. As opposed to relational database systems, these new database systems lagging in providing security in order to achieve high performance and scalability. Cassandra is one among the several existing NoSQL databases whose primary concern is scalability, high availability and no single point of failure for retrieving the stored data. As mentioned earlier, for Cassandra also the security is not a primary concern. Here we proposed a method for storing the data into Cassandra securely using explicit data encryption scheme. This paper gives a detailed overview of Cassandra database with its data model, architecture, security issues and finally the proposed architecture for storing the data into Cassandra securely using explicit data encryption method.