The world is currently undergoing a massive digital transformation, and data is at the heart of this revolution. In this age of big data, businesses are collecting more information than ever before. This data is often stored in centralized database management systems (DBMS). The amount of digital data is increasing exponentially, and legacy database management systems are simply not equipped to deal with this volume or data securely. According to Cisco, the number of global internet users is likely to increase to 5.3 billion by 2023.
Shutterstock.comLegacy database management systems refer to DBMS that have been around for a long time. Despite their evolution, they still fail to meet the threshold of the growing data, and they are still corporate-centric, rather than consumer-centered. These systems bundle together user data and store, modify, and maintain them in a central location. This means that a few organizations, an individual, or a group of people hold a massive amount of user data, giving the database a central point of failure.
The corporations or individuals monopolizing the data storage market have complete control over the centralized database system. Simply, the users have no power over their own data in a legacy database system. This causes issues for legacy database systems, as explained below:
- Security concerns Legacy systems are barely updated or maintained, and employ dated security protocols and standards. This results in patches that make them a target for attackers, providing threat actors with a large amount of sensitive data.
- Accessibility As these systems are centrally managed, users have to rely on the system administrators to gain access to their data. This causes data silos–coupled with the high cost of file storage, locking some people from accessing their data.
- Data control Because these databases are typically managed by centralized organizations, companies have little control over their data. They cannot decide who can access it or how it is used. This lack of control can lead to data breaches and privacy violations.
- Lack of insights Users have no visibility into how their data is being used or accessed. This lack of transparency can make it difficult to identify issues, such as abuse or misuse of data.
- Single point of failure When there's a power outage in the data storage facilities, or a single server fails, the entire data held on the server becomes vulnerable. The user data is also prone to data loss in the case of such an event.
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The rise of decentralized database solutions
Recently, there has been a shift towards decentralized database solutions to solve legacy database solution issues. These systems are designed to be distributed, rather than centralize data. This means that data is spread across a network of nodes, instead of being stored in a single location. Modifications made on a single node automatically reflects on the other nodes.
It makes decentralized database solutions more secure and resilient to attacks. For instance, since data in such systems is distributed across a network of nodes, it is more difficult for attackers to target it. In addition, decentralized database solutions employ cryptographic algorithms to encrypt data so that only users with the appropriate private keys can decrypt the data.
Decentralized DMBS also allow users to access their data anytime as long as they have an internet connection. This makes it easier and faster to access data. Furthermore, they offer greater transparency, that is, users have complete visibility into how their data is being used. This allows them to identify issues early on and act to prevent them. Consequently, as users have complete control over their data in a decentralized system, they can decide who can access it and how it is used. This helps to protect user data and prevent privacy violations.
At the end of the day, the shift from legacy DBMS to decentralized DBMS is an essential step for the transition to Web3, and my company, Inery, frontiers the disruption with its database management solution that offers data integrity, scalability, sovereignty, and security preparing for a user-centric economy. Onward and upward!
