Issues and approaches to supporting timeliness and security in real-time database systems

Databases for real-time systems are essential in supporting time-critical applications. However, there has not been much work in supporting security in real-time database systems, although sensitive information must be safeguarded in real-time systems as well. In this paper we address the issues that need to be considered for supporting both requirements of timeliness and security in real-time database systems. We present an adaptive policy to achieve the balance between the two requirements dynamically. We also present the notion of flexible security and the specification language that allows the designer to specify important properties of the database at an appropriate level.