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

External Article

Security Auditing Matching Up Logins And Users

I have been tasked with auditing security on my SQL Server. However, this needs to be a somewhat automated process as I don't want to have to rely on taking screenshots every month to satisfy our auditors. What tables and/or views should I be using and what's the best way to extract the information out of them?

2010-08-25

3,618 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Enabling the Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC) in SQL Server Express

SQL Server Express has the same code base as the rest of the versions of SQL Server, but there are some differences in how to set it up and configure various tasks. MVP Brian Kelley shows us how to enable the Dedicated Administrator Connection.

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2009-10-21

5,892 reads

Technical Article

Weak Passwords Discovered in the 10,000 Disclosed Hotmail/Live.com/MSN leaked accounts

By now, hopefully everyone has heard of the security breach where accounts and passwords were found on a public site listed the account usernames and passwords of some 10,000 users. Initially it was just reported to be Hotmail/Live.com/MSN, but it turns

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2009-10-13

3,534 reads

Blogs

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Forums

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Question of the Day

Azure SQL Database MAXDOP

When Azure SQL Database was originally released, the MAXDOP was set to 0 for each new database. In Oct 2025, what is the default value for Azure SQL databases?

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