Услуга · Information security

Database protection

The database holds your information in full and in the form most convenient for copying. Yet it is usually less protected than the application: there you have roles and separation, here a single administrative password known to several people.

Records
individual for administrators
Auditing
selective, with no slowdown
Copies
encrypted
Tests
on anonymised data

What the work includes

It all comes down to three questions: who can connect, what they are allowed to do and whether it lands in the logs.

Discuss the scope

Accounts

Individual accounts for administrators, separate accounts for applications with trimmed rights.

Isolation

Connecting to the database directly from workstations should not be possible, and from the internet even less so.

Auditing

We log queries and especially bulk selections. Exporting the whole client base has to be visible.

Encryption

Both the data itself and the backups. An unencrypted copy is a leak waiting for its moment.

Test environments

Anonymisation in training and test copies: a developer has no need for real names.

Updates

A procedure for installing fixes with mandatory trials on a test environment.

How it goes

The work goes ahead without stopping the live database. A window is needed only for updates and enabling encryption.

01

Survey

Who connects, from where and with what rights. A couple of forgotten accesses turn up almost every time.

02

Access

We cut off unnecessary network connections, create an individual account for every administrator, and shared passwords go.

03

Auditing and encryption

We start logging and encrypt the data itself along with all the archives.

04

Testing

We confirm that bulk exports are logged and that a restore from an encrypted copy actually works.

A direct connection to the database from a workstation is a door around every application role. Anyone with a database tool bypasses the whole permission model: the application restricts them, the database does not. It is closed off at network level and takes one evening.

Questions and answers

With the database administrators, each under their own account. Developers do not need access to the live database; they need an anonymised copy. A shared administrative account known to the whole department is the most common finding in a survey.

Not on the same server and not on the same network as the live database. One copy must be impossible to alter from the main infrastructure, otherwise ransomware takes it along with the original.

Anonymise it. Mechanisms exist for replacing real names, numbers and addresses with plausible invented ones while preserving structure and volume. For development and testing that is more than enough.

We will check database protection

Write which databases you use and who connects to them. We will look at access, auditing and how the copies are stored.