Accounts
Individual accounts for administrators, separate accounts for applications with trimmed rights.
It all comes down to three questions: who can connect, what they are allowed to do and whether it lands in the logs.
Individual accounts for administrators, separate accounts for applications with trimmed rights.
Connecting to the database directly from workstations should not be possible, and from the internet even less so.
We log queries and especially bulk selections. Exporting the whole client base has to be visible.
Both the data itself and the backups. An unencrypted copy is a leak waiting for its moment.
Anonymisation in training and test copies: a developer has no need for real names.
A procedure for installing fixes with mandatory trials on a test environment.
The work goes ahead without stopping the live database. A window is needed only for updates and enabling encryption.
Who connects, from where and with what rights. A couple of forgotten accesses turn up almost every time.
We cut off unnecessary network connections, create an individual account for every administrator, and shared passwords go.
We start logging and encrypt the data itself along with all the archives.
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.
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.
Write which databases you use and who connects to them. We will look at access, auditing and how the copies are stored.
Request received
It is already with a manager. You will get an answer within the working day, and urgent requests go to the duty engineer immediately.
There is no such city in the list. Check the spelling.