There was a post recently where someone was asking about securing log shipping to comply with HIPAA requirements. It struck me at first that really log shipping isn’t a SQL Server operation, it’s a Windows operation. The ongoing process of log shipping is:

• Perform a SQL Server log backup
• File sits on the local Windows file system for some xxx time
• Copy the log file to the remote server
• The file sits on the remote Windows file system for some yyy time
• Restore the log backup to the SQL Server instance

Of these, they break down in terms of security and possible issues in this way.

The only real places to provide security are from Windows, where you need to do the following:

• Assign tight Windows security to a limited access group, preferably only service accounts for SQL Server.
• Ensure network communications between the two Windows servers is secure with something like IPSec.

This means to me that this is primarily a Windows issue, and that the DBA needs to work with the Windows admin to implement an IPSec policy or setup a secure tunnel. Here’s one link I found, but not being a strong Windows admin, I’m not sure if it’s the best one. The idea would be that you would want to secure the network traffic to prevent a third party from copying the log backup somehow.

Is it a big deal? I’m not sure about that. I think this is an item that auditors might be concerned about more than it is a security risk. After all, even if a hacker acquired an old full backup and a log backup, they wouldn’t necessarily be able to restore the log backup since the LSNs would be out of order. And while a log backup might contain sensitive information, an attacker couldn’t guarantee that any particular log backup would have sensitive information. Only if that information were edited would it be included in a log backup.

The big security downside is that whatever channel or method you use here would likely be the same one used for initialize things and include a full backup somewhere. So it’s a good idea to provide tight security, and not just set up shares that Everyone can access.