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

Bad Admins: Taking Advantage of Maintenance Periods

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

This is part of a series of tips on how bad/rogue admins can get access to the data in your...

2011-07-25

1,061 reads

Bad Admins: Stealing the SQL Server Service Account

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

This is part of a series of tips on how bad/rogue admins can get access to the data in your...

2011-07-22

1,369 reads

Bad Admins: Pocketing Backups

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

This is part of a series of tips on how bad/rogue admins can get access to the data in your...

2011-07-21

730 reads

Gaining Speaker Experience Credentials, Part II

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

In a previous post I gave suggestions on how to get speaking credentials for consideration at a larger event, such...

2011-07-21

940 reads

Bad Admins: Stealing An Account

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

Yesterday I posted about manipulating group membership to get access to a SQL Server. Today comes attack vector #2: stealing an...

2011-07-14

1,191 reads

Bad Admins: Attacking via Group Membership

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

This is a series of blog posts about how administrators can gain access to SQL Server, even if you try...

2011-07-13

1,874 reads

Gaining Speaker Experience Credentials

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

One of the things I saw on Twitter yesterday was several folks saying their abstract submissions had been turned down...

2011-06-16

1,889 reads

Speaking at the 2011 PASS Summit

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

The emails came in today and 2 out of 4 of my sessions were selected. Both are the ones I...

2011-06-15

891 reads

Planning Your Upgrade Well

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

Yesterday I talked about the importance of having a tested business recovery plan. If you didn't read yesterday's post, the...

2011-06-07

966 reads

The Importance of a Business Recovery Plan

by Brian Kelley

Databases – Infrastructure – Security

Recently I was in one of those chain restaurants (the middle-priced, sit-down types) and shortly after we got there, we...

2011-06-06

1,899 reads

Blogs

“We love to debate minutiae”

By Brian Kelley

I am guilty as charged. The quote was in reference to how people argue...

Advice I Like: Knots

Learn how to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark. With one hand....

Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency

As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...

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Forums

Windows logins for users migrated from DomainA to DomainB

Hi, I have a SQL Server instance where users connect to via Windows Authentication,...

Multiple Deployment Processes

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Deployment Processes

How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases

Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...

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Question of the Day

Upgrading Admin Queries

I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?

See possible answers