The database is the cornerstone of any business with a digital footprint, and is becoming a valuable commodity. Therefore, it is imperative to protect critical business data from data loss and data breaches. Data is increasingly coming into the focus of governments and regulators aiming to ensure privacy rules are upheld and personal information is protected.
In the United States, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) enforces laws over data protection and gives citizens the right to delete any data collected on them. Similarly, in Europe the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) governs how data is collected, stored, and processed.
The growing concerns over data protection emphasize the need for database security. Despite the fact that not all business data is applicable to local privacy laws, customers expect data integrity to be upheld to the highest of standards.
Achieving database security and data integrity is a significant challenge, but there are many tools available to help with this process and to harden the database against the most common vulnerabilities. Choose a database security solution that will work seamlessly when running workloads either in the cloud, in a local data center, or as part of a hybrid configuration of the two.
The Importance of Database Security
Companies run on data stored in databases, and data has real value when processed efficiently and accurately. Data gives you insights into the latest business trends and it can realistically predict the next quarter’s sales volumes allowing you to adjust the entire business operation and supply chain to make sure everything works smoothly.
Due to the growing value of data, the risk of data breaches is increasingly common. Databases are the crown jewels of a business and cybercriminals are desperate to exfiltrate data. Failing to secure customer data can destroy a business’s reputation, cause significant loss in revenue and drive your customers away to the next trusted competitor. Investing in database security absolutely outweighs the risk of suffering a data breach.
Many businesses are opting to push forward with a cloud migration strategy, and this is partly being driven as a response to the demands of working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic. The database server is usually one of the very first to be migrated but database experts are cautiously suggesting this rapid desire to get database workloads into the cloud is creating a cloud security readiness gap.
A database security strategy is needed to tackle several concerns surrounding vulnerabilities in database applications. The dangers of misconfiguration of database servers and cloud data solutions is a sincere concern and there is a desire to introduce security standards to protect against cybersecurity threats, to tackle the insider threat and reduce human error.
Key Features of a Database Security Solution
The database security solution needs to be scalable enough to act as a single pane of glass, prvindg you access to all business data when needed. It should include access to current and historical data for auditing purposes and Information Rights Management from all data sources.
Most businesses have multiple database solutions; SQL databases, cloud databases, data warehousing, and data lakes so the database security solution needs to include all of these data sources but also be capable of importing any new databases added in the future, no matter where the data source is located.
The database security must also be affordable, database licensing in the data center is expensive, often with a per-core licensing model. Cloud computing is much more affordable but you still have to focus on costs surrounding data retention. Production databases are typically replicated at least once, and this is for data protection purposes as well as for performance benefits.
Automation also plays an important role in a database security solution. The aim is to remove any traditional manual elements of database management such as reporting and implement automated event-driven responses using tools such as Aurora, Kafka, Kibana, and Splunk.
Database security must take advantage of enhanced analytics to intelligently monitor and protect the security of the data. This is done in two key areas referred to as UEBA (User Entity and Behaviour Analytics) and SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response).
UEBA and SOAR are both cybersecurity processes that use analytics, UEBA concentrates on detecting anomalous user behavior, such as patterns that deviate from a baseline. SOAR has a similar role to play, but it uses logged data to spot unexpected trends in the data. Both technologies use machine learning and AI to predict what these deviations are.
Implementing Effective Database Security
There are a number of fundamental elements of database security that must be met, and these conditions are recommended for all database applications. It is important to get the basics right such as enforcing encryption on all databases and database backups. The encryption standard should be a minimum of AES-256bit.
All modern database applications include encryption out-of-the-box, so make sure it is enabled and then consider additional encryption at the server, storage, and network layers to protect data as it traverses the network. If the database is self-hosted, ensure that appropriate access controls, physical security and audit logs are in place.
Secure user access to the database by following the principle of least privilege, then enforce strict password policies and lock down local database access to a select few trusted employees using IP based geolocation security.
Regular database users typically access the database via a front-end application such as SQLStudio, secure user access by restricting IP ranges then configure granular privileged access groups such as read-only, power user, or admin.