Auditing SQL Server – Part 2 – Hardware Audit

This is the second part of my series on auditing SQL Server. In the first part, I discussed basic server discovery and documentation. It covered some items to check at the hardware level and configuration items, but this section gets into more detailed hardware auditing details.

Design your systems and processes for auditability

I have worked in more than one regulated industry, and since the banking crisis of 2008, I have witnessed a sea change in the approach to regulation.  The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) was seen to be a toothless tiger.  The UK government replaced the FSA with two separate bodies, each with its own more […]

Generic trigger for maintaining the Audit Log

This trigger will work even if you don't have the primary key on any table. Mechanism to configure the primary key in config table has been provided. This can be very helpful to solve the system audit requirements without much efforts.

Disclaimer : Audit Log trigger has performance overhead. It’s meant for table which is not frequently updated, deleted or inserted. Please take precaution when creating the trigger on the table having too many columns.

6 steps to a more secure SQL database

Security is often something people think about only after they have had a problem. Given that the average cost of a data breach is $3.92 million (SecurityIntelligence 2019) and ransomware attacks have increased 97% over the past 2 years (PhishMe 2019), the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" approach can clearly be catastrophic. Here […]

SQL Server System Audit Report

Ensuring that your SQL Server is secure is the job of every Database Administrator. In this article I will provide a script to help perform easier audits of your system.

DDL Auditing using the Default trace

This article explains how default trace can be used for auditing purposes when combined with PowerShell scripts