Category: Security

SQL Server 2019 security improvements: Feature Restrictions

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Database Design, Databases, Security, SQL Database, SQL Server
Tilted Stop sign vector image
Restricted!

Very recently I was working on a customer databases, when I more or less stumbled on a something I had not noticed before. Apparently at some point the latest version of SQL Server (I was working with Azure SQL DB) had a new security enhancement added into it called Feature Restrictions. As this was something I had not heard about before, I figured this would be a good opportunity to dig in and learn more about it.

Note: As I was finishing up this post to add links and such, I noticed that the official documentation from Microsoft regarding Feature Restrictions has completely vanished.

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Hiding (mostly) in plain sight: Dynamic Data Masking

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Databases, Security, SQL Server, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA
Masks on!

One of the more recent additions to SQL Server security features is the Dynamic Data Masking (DDM), included with the 2016 version. Like the Transparent Data Encryption I blogged about recently, DDM is a feature that is relatively easy to implement, and doesn’t require a lot of changes to the application. And just like pretty much everything is easy in a real life, it too has some limitations.

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Protecting Data at Rest: Transparent Data Encryption

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Databases, Security, SQL Server, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA

I recently read an article which stating that since the GDPR came in force, there has been 59,000 data breaches reported in the EU. I must admit, that while I did anticipate that we’d see a surge in these numbers, due to reporting requirements in the legislation. I really did not expect the numbers to look that terrifying.

From the point of view of a SQL Server DBA, there is a number of different ways to protect your data. Some of them are even quite easy to setup, such as Transparent Data Encryption (TDE). So let’s have a look at how to set that up!

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Undeprecated SQL Server features

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Microsoft, Security, SQL Server, Tools and Utilities

The Feature Reaper!
The Feature Reaper!

As we all know there are many features in SQL Server that have been deprecated over the time by Microsoft for one reason or another. In fact, there is a long list of features that are deprecated in the latest SQL Server 2017 release.

It is far less often that any of these features make a comeback, however that can apparently happen, as I just witnessed last week.

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Windows Firewall and antivirus software configurations for SQL Server.

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Security, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA, Tools and Utilities, Windows Administration, Windows Server Management

One of the more important duties of a DBA is to make sure that their databases and the data is secure. In this post we’ll be looking at two utilities to increase the security of your server, the Windows Firewall and an antivirus software. Like with about everything else related to servers, you can’t just switch these on (well, you could, but…) and forget about them to get the best possible experience. They need to be properly configured for servers running Microsoft SQL Server. If you’re a DBA you might not be doing the configuration yourself, but you still need to tell your Windows administrators what they need to do.

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End of Lifecycle for Windows 2003 R2 and SQL Server 2005

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Microsoft, Security, SQL Server Administration, Uncategorized, Windows Administration

Just a friendly reminder to everyone that just like all good things come to and end so does the extended support for these two Microsoft products. First will be the Windows 2003 R2 with the end of lifecycle date set to July 14 2015 and soon after that SQL Server 2005 with it’s end of lifecycle date set to April 12 2016.

You can still run these products after these dates of course but it’s definitely not recommended and the reason is simple. End of the extended support means that neither of these products will be receiving any patches or security updates, ever. So if you’re not already working on upgrading them, now would be a good time to start.

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RSS feeds about Microsoft KB articles

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Microsoft, Security, SQL Server Administration

Just a quick tip this time, but one that can save you lot of time and manual work.

One of the information sources that all administrators, both Windows and SQL Server alike, should follow is the Microsoft Knowledge Base. However as there are new articles coming in daily, going to Knowledge Base and manually searching for them isn’t really a viable option. Even less so if you’re responsible for administering multiple versions of Microsoft software.

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