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What are the four best practices for enterprise database security? Many novices are not very clear about this. In order to help you solve this problem, the following small series will explain it in detail. Those who have this need can learn it. I hope you can gain something.

We all know how important it is to protect sensitive information. Fortunately, most organizations now have solid cybersecurity programs that leverage multiple controls for defense-in-depth security. Through these programs, enterprise servers are hardened, enterprise endpoints are protected, and monitoring tools are deployed. Enterprises are also able to eliminate highly sensitive information from endpoint devices and consolidate the most critical enterprise data in enterprise systems and the databases that support them.

But how strong are the controls around these centralized stores?

There is no doubt that information is safer stored in secure centralized databases than in laptops and file sharing. However, if organizations fail to secure their databases, they may unknowingly be building a treasure trove of sensitive information for attackers.

Many enterprise databases are vulnerable to vulnerabilities due to misconfiguration or improper deployment. From low password strength to SQL injection attacks to cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, organizations must address these database-related threats.

In addition to these vulnerabilities, every enterprise should also follow and regularly review database security best practices to maintain the security of its valuable asset: confidential data stored in databases. This is a tempting target for any attacker. Therefore, ensuring data security is crucial.

Businesses should follow these four best practices to improve the security of their databases and the data stored in them.

1. principle of least privilege

Typically, in any cybersecurity book, the first chapter introduces the principle of least privilege, which ensures that users are given only the minimum privileges they need to do their job. The gap between this theoretical goal and the reality of enterprise databases is an important one. To assess this, companies should ask themselves several questions, including:

Do developers have full access to production databases?

Do system engineers have access to databases in the systems they manage?

Do database administrators have full access to all databases? Or do they only have access to databases in their area of responsibility? Limiting access as much as possible is an important way to guard against insider threats.

2. Periodically review access rights

Everyone knows that privilege elevation affects virtually every technology enterprise. As technicians and non-technicians switch between job roles and project assignments, they accumulate new privileges each time their responsibilities change. Because lack of authority hinders work, they quickly seek and approve new authority. However, old and unnecessary permissions may persist for months or years because they do not cause operational problems for employees in their daily work. However, this can have serious implications, as if the user becomes a malicious insider or a victim of account theft, these permissions can help the attacker expand the attack.

Businesses should conduct periodic reviews of database access rights to ensure compliance with the principle of least privilege. Pay special attention to users who directly access the database, as such access may bypass application-level security controls.

3. Monitoring database activity

Database auditing used to be a huge performance burden, which led organizations to sacrifice logging for operational efficiency. Fortunately, those days are over, as all major database platform vendors now offer scalable monitoring and logging capabilities.

Enterprises should ensure that database monitoring is enabled on their systems and that logs are sent to a secure repository. Also, ensure that behavior-based monitoring rules are implemented to monitor for unusual user activity, especially users with administrative access.

4. encrypt sensitive data

Encryption is undoubtedly a database security best practice. Businesses should protect their databases with strong encryption in three ways:

Require all databases to use transport layer security encryption to protect data in transit;

Encrypt disks containing data storage to prevent loss, theft, or mishandling;

Protect your most sensitive data from eavesdropping with column encryption

It is time for businesses to strengthen their database security practices. To better defend against modern complex threats, organizations should follow the database security best practices outlined above: enforcing the principle of least privilege, regularly reviewing account access, monitoring database activity, and encrypting sensitive data.

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