Question

Database security is crucial, and it is part of every business continuity plan. List at least two elements of a database security plan that you think are the most important and explain why. As a reference, review this article addressing Dixon Carphone (Links to an external site.), a British retailer that faced a serious breach when 1.2 million customers’ personal information from its database was compromised.

Answer 1

1.    Compliance: Monitoring and auditing

Compliance is an important part of a database protection solution. This is because many of the regulations and statutes provided for with compliance address very real problems faced by enterprises and to which must receive due attention.

It is an essential part of implementing IT security, but it falls short in that much of the regulations provided focus more on monitoring procedures as opposed to real-time prevention of threats to the database and system. As such, while essential, compliance is not nearly enough.

A major component of compliance is implementation of Database Activity Monitoring (DAM). The DAM will identify every activity in the database, generating reports and necessary alerts about those activities.

Compliance for each organization involves adherence to relevant standards bodies’ regulations e.g. the SOX, PCI-DSS or HIPAA, as well as any relevant international compliance standards e.g. ISO 27001 standard on Information Security Management Systems.

By applying DAM, you will be able to tell who is accessing the database (individual or entity) and why. Most standards bodies require a comprehensive reporting system outlining who or what did what, when and why.

Every database protection solution must therefore include tools that detect and alert the relevant admins about activities that deviate from the standard policies (organizational and otherwise) or are suspicious. Having alerts for suspicious behaviors will help you to manage such issues in real-time, even if you have a DB firewall.

Monitoring should also include sins of omission i.e. what needs to be done but has not been. Examples include regular changing of passwords or monitoring individuals that have DB privileges that they have not ever used. Information on lack of activity will help you know where there is proffering of excessive privileges so that you can revoke them before they are misused.

2.    Separation of tasks and access control

Access control primarily aims at preventing malicious attacks and potential threats from within the organization. While there are instances of deliberate malicious attacks from insiders, more often than not these result from theft of login credentials.

By separating duties and assigning functionality and privileges according to user requirements, you can limit the extent of damage in case of potential or actualized threats. For instance, a user responsible for creating backup files to the DB needs never see the actual content in the DB. A tester will need access into the database, but not necessarily to actual data stored therein.

In duty separation, you must give every user only the minimum access needed to carry out the job. By allowing every user to only carry out tasks under their jurisdiction you can largely protect your databases from inadvertent as well as deliberate breaches.

Every DB protection tool or solution must include functions for separation of tasks, with as large a range as possible of controls and privilege regulation. Apart from the inbuilt tools, the database firewall should be able to detect what users are in the system, allowing even greater control over their privileges and applications within the database.