Watermarking can be used to protect the integrity of databases
Watermarking can be used to protect the integrity of databases against unauthorized changes. Malicious alteration cannot be detected in all cases. Wwatermarking database indexes in addition to the database tables would improve the detection of unauthorized alterations. Usually, each database table in commercial applications has more than one index attached to it. Thus, watermarking the database table and all its indexes improve the likelihood of detecting malicious attacks. In general, watermarking different indexes like R-trees, B-trees, Hashes, require different watermarking techniques and exploit different redundancies in the underlying data structure. This diversity in watermarking techniques contributes to the overall integrity of the databases.
Introduction of watermarking innitially does not work perfect and gave some errors too. The detection rate of the malicious attacks on databases depends on the nature of the attack, distribution of the data, and the size of the R-tree node. The watermark insertion and extraction are mainly main memory operations, and thus, have minimal effect on the cost of R-tree operations.