Brian Kelley

Brian Kelley is an author, columnist, and Microsoft SQL Server MVP focusing primarily on SQL Server security. He is a contributing author for How to Cheat at Securing SQL Server 2005 (Syngress), Professional SQL Server 2008 Administration (Wrox), and Introduction to SQL Server (Texas Publishing). Brian currently serves as an infrastructure and security architect. He has also served as a senior Microsoft SQL Server DBA, database architect, developer, and incident response team lead.

Interests: Chess, Reading, Soccer (Football), Baseball, Animals, Theology

Carolina Technology Conference: Presentation Materials

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

For those able to attend my session at this year’s Carolina Technology Conference, thank you! As promised, here are the...

2014-10-06

802 reads

Four Things PASS gets Right

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

PASS has taken a lot of heat recently. A few folks have pointed out that you only seem to hear...

2014-09-29 (first published: 2014-09-24)

6,780 reads

[Off-Topic] Beating Childhood Cancer

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

Note: I feel this post is important enough to post across all my blogs.
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month here...

2014-09-09

552 reads

4 Attitudes I Wish I Had Earlier as a DBA

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

I was tagged by Mike Walsh (blog | twitter) in his post 4 Attitudes I Wish I Had Earlier As a...

2014-09-05 (first published: 2014-08-28)

8,129 reads

Audit Webinar Tomorrow (4 September 2014)

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

I will be given a webinar on how to audit SQL Server through MSSQLTips.com.
Webinar Registration Link
The abstract:
Don’t become a statistic....

2014-09-03

507 reads

Continuous Integration/Delivery without Testing!

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

Anything we can do to automate our builds and deployment should be considered. After all, the point isn’t just to...

2014-08-28 (first published: 2014-08-25)

7,618 reads

Still a Need for a SQL Server Specific Organization

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

If you haven’t already, please read Denise McInerney’s post about why PASS no longer stands for the Professional Association for...

2014-08-20

661 reads

Guest Post on SQL Authority – Default Trace & Deleted Databases

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

I had the opportunity to write another guest post at SQL Authority:
Finding Out What Changed in a Deleted Database
This one...

2014-08-14

1,359 reads

One of Those Must Read Books – The Cuckoo’s Egg

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

I was reading a book about network security monitoring and it mentioned The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll. Stoll’s book has been...

2014-08-13

519 reads

Guest Editorial Live on SSC

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

My guest editorial is live on SQLServerCentral.com. My argument is a simple one: we don’t care about data and IT...

2014-08-11

493 reads

Blogs

Narrow Task Decomposition in AI Pipeline Agents

By Eduardo Pivaral

A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...

Car Update: August 2026

It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to...

Microsoft Fabric OneLake Shortcuts: When to Use Them and When Not To

An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...

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Forums

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Question of the Day

Backing Up a DMK

In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?

See possible answers