What You’ll Learn

• The critical importance of database security in protecting sensitive information.
• Key regulatory frameworks impacting database compliance, including GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX.
• Best practices for ensuring database security and compliance, such as encryption and access control.
• Common challenges organizations face in maintaining database security and actionable solutions to overcome them.
• Steps to build a comprehensive database security and compliance strategy tailored to your organization’s needs.
• How DBmaestro can enhance your database security and compliance efforts.

The Importance of Database Security

Database security is no longer optional—it’s a necessity for modern businesses. With the increasing frequency and sophistication of cyber-attacks, organizations face significant risks to their data integrity, confidentiality, and availability. A single data breach can result in substantial financial losses, reputational damage, and legal consequences.

Threats to database security come in various forms:

• SQL injection attacks: Malicious actors exploit vulnerabilities in application code to manipulate database queries.
• Insider threats: Employees or contractors with privileged access may misuse or compromise sensitive data.
• Ransomware: Cybercriminals encrypt databases and demand payment for decryption keys.
• Misconfiguration: Improperly configured databases can leave sensitive information exposed to unauthorized access.

Understanding Database Compliance Regulations

Compliance with data protection regulations is essential for organizations handling sensitive information. Key regulatory frameworks include:

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)

• Applies to organizations processing EU residents’ personal data
• Requires explicit consent for data collection and processing
• Mandates data breach notifications within 72 hours

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)

• Governs healthcare organizations and their business associates in the US
• Requires safeguards for protected health information (PHI)
• Imposes strict penalties for non-compliance

SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act)

• Applies to publicly traded companies in the US
• Mandates internal controls and financial reporting standards
• Requires retention of electronic records and communications

Database Security Best Practices for Compliance

To ensure database security and maintain compliance, organizations should implement the following best practices:

1. Implement Strong Access Controls

Robust access management is crucial for protecting sensitive data. Key strategies include:

• Enforcing the principle of least privilege
• Implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA)
• Regularly reviewing and updating user permissions
• Using role-based access control (RBAC)

2. Encrypt Sensitive Data

Encryption is essential for safeguarding data both at rest and in transit. Best practices include:

• Utilizing industry-standard encryption algorithms (e.g., AES)
• Implementing SSL/TLS for secure data transmission
• Encrypting backups and sensitive database fields

3. Conduct Regular Security Audits

Periodic audits help identify vulnerabilities and ensure ongoing compliance. Key audit activities include:

• Reviewing access logs and user activities
• Assessing database configurations and security settings
• Conducting vulnerability scans and penetration testing

4. Keep Software Updated

Regularly updating database management systems and associated software is crucial for addressing known vulnerabilities. Best practices include:

• Implementing a patch management process
• Testing updates in a non-production environment before deployment
• Automating security updates where possible

5. Monitor Database Activity

Continuous monitoring helps detect and respond to potential security threats. Effective monitoring strategies include:

• Implementing intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS)
• Using database activity monitoring (DAM) tools
• Setting up alerts for suspicious activities or unauthorized access attempts

Common Database Security Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Organizations face several challenges in maintaining database security and compliance:

Challenge: Insider Threats

Solution: Implement strict access controls, conduct regular security awareness training, and monitor user activities for anomalous behavior. Using role-based access control and multi-factor-authentication rather than user and password logins will limit potential vulnerability.

Challenge: Legacy Systems

Solution: Develop a migration plan for outdated systems, implement compensating controls, and isolate legacy databases from critical infrastructure.

Challenge: Cloud Migration

Solution: Choose cloud providers with robust security measures, implement encryption for data in transit and at rest, and clearly define responsibilities in shared security models.

How to Build a Database Security and Compliance Strategy

Developing a comprehensive security and compliance strategy involves several key steps:

1. Assess current security posture: Conduct a thorough risk assessment to identify vulnerabilities and compliance gaps.
2. Develop security policies: Create clear, documented policies outlining data handling procedures, access controls, and incident response plans.
3. Implement technical controls: Deploy security measures such as encryption, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems.
4. Train employees: Conduct regular security awareness training to educate staff on best practices and compliance requirements.
5. Continuously monitor and improve: Regularly assess the effectiveness of security measures and update strategies as threats evolve.

Key Takeaways

• Database security is critical for protecting sensitive data and maintaining regulatory compliance.
• Implementing strong access controls, encryption, and regular audits are essential best practices.
• Overcoming challenges like insider threats and legacy systems requires a multi-faceted approach.
• Building a comprehensive security strategy involves assessment, policy development, technical controls, training, and continuous improvement.

Leveraging DBmaestro for Enhanced Database Security and Compliance

As organizations strive to improve their database security and compliance posture, tools like DBmaestro can play a crucial role in automating and streamlining these processes. DBmaestro offers a comprehensive solution for database DevOps, addressing key security and compliance concerns:

• Automated Security and Compliance: DBmaestro enforces organizational policies, manages roles and permissions, leverages password values, single-sign-on processes, multi-factor-authentication, and ensures compliance with regulations such as SOC2, GDPR, CCPA, SOX, and HIPAA.
• Database Release Automation: By automating the release pipeline, DBmaestro helps ensure successful, seamless, and audited high-quality releases, reducing the risk of human error and improving overall security.
• Source Control and Version Management: DBmaestro extends coding best practices to databases, maintaining a single source of truth for all database changes and facilitating collaboration between teams.
• Audit Trails: The platform automatically creates detailed audit trails for all database changes, supporting compliance efforts and enabling better tracking of modifications.

By incorporating tools like DBmaestro into your database security and compliance strategy, you can enhance automation, reduce manual errors, and improve overall data protection.

By prioritizing database security and compliance, and leveraging advanced tools and practices, organizations can protect their valuable data assets, maintain customer trust, and avoid costly breaches and regulatory penalties. Stay vigilant, adapt to evolving threats, and make security an integral part of your data management strategy.

Generative AI’s impact on economies and enterprises is poised to be revolutionary. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, generative AI is expected to contribute between $2.6 and $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy.

Text-generating AI systems like ChatGPT are based on large language models (LLMs). These models train on vast datasets to answer questions or perform tasks by predicting the statistical likelihood of various outcomes. Instead of searching and synthesizing answers, LLMs use mathematical models to determine the most probable next step.

To maximize the outcomes of these smart but generic models and tailor them to specific company needs, corporates will have to fine-tune them by melting new and fresh training data extracted from their own operational systems. This new data can and will contain intellectual property information and raises the potential for regulatory breaches. There are no free rides—eventually, such data can and will be traded somewhere by someone.

Over the years, the absence of a single database authority, combined with the increasing demand for more insights and faster results, has led organizations to dangerously replicate databases and datasets into isolated and less protected environments for analytics or other prioritized needs. This practice, along with manual database code change management bad consequences and impact, sets the stage for new operational and security risks triggered by metadata inconsistencies.

The Hidden Dangers of Metadata Inconsistency in Generative AI

Metadata inconsistency arises when different teams create, manage, and extract data from various databases and schemas without a unified governance strategy. This fragmentation can lead to several security vulnerabilities:

1. Exposure of Sensitive Data: Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and other sensitive data can be inadvertently exposed when metadata is not consistently managed. For example, secured columns may be ignored, leading to data breaches.
2. Uncontrolled Schema Copies: Creating multiple copies of schemas for generative AI purposes without proper governance increases the risk of unauthorized access and data leakage.
3. Misleading Insights: Inconsistent metadata can twist the results of generative AI models, providing incorrect and misleading insights that can harm business decisions.
4. Compliance Breaches: Failure to maintain consistent metadata management can result in non-compliance with regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and FFIEC, leading to hefty fines and legal repercussions.

As organizations take their initial steps in deploying generative AI, they must be aware of these risks and adopt robust metadata management practices to prevent security breaches and ensure accurate AI model outputs.

DBmaestro with DevSecOps: The Key to Secure Generative AI Deployments

DBmaestro, a leading DevSecOps platform, offers a comprehensive solution to the security and compliance challenges posed by generative AI. By integrating CI/CD and security into every stage of the database development lifecycle, DBmaestro ensures that metadata is consistently managed, sensitive metadata is protected, and compliance requirements are met. Here are the main DevSecOps features and functionalities of DBmaestro and how they address the challenges of generative AI:

• Single Source of Truth: DBmaestro provides a unified repository for all databases, schemas, and environments, ensuring consistent metadata management.
• Automated Security Features: With features like Single Sign-On (SSO), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), password vaults, and automated policy enforcement, DBmaestro enhances security and compliance.
• Separation of Duties: DBmaestro’s policy enforcement module helps create a state-of-the-art separation of duties, reducing risks and increasing efficiency.
• Agile Deployment: By integrating security into the development pipeline, DBmaestro enables faster and safer deployment of generative AI models, turning DevOps teams into agile and efficient units.

1. Automated Release Automation and Version Control:
   • Challenge Addressed: Uncontrolled schema copies and exposure of sensitive data.
   • Solution: DBmaestro provides automated release automation and version control, ensuring that every change to the database is tracked and managed. This helps govern schema copies and ensures that sensitive data is consistently protected across all environments.
2. Policy Enforcement and Compliance:
   • Challenge Addressed: Compliance breaches and exposure of sensitive data.
   • Solution: With DBmaestro’s policy enforcement, organizations can define and enforce rules for database changes, ensuring compliance with regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and FFIEC. This reduces the risk of data breaches and legal repercussions.
3. Security Gates and Approval Workflows:
   • Challenge Addressed: Uncontrolled schema copies and exposure of sensitive data.
   • Solution: DBmaestro incorporates security gates and approval workflows into the DevOps process, requiring approvals for changes that affect sensitive data or critical database components. This ensures that all changes are reviewed and authorized, preventing unauthorized access and data leakage.
4. Comprehensive Audit Trails:
   • Challenge Addressed: Compliance breaches and exposure of sensitive data.
   • Solution: DBmaestro maintains comprehensive audit trails of all database activities, providing visibility into who made changes, what changes were made, and when. This transparency is crucial for compliance audits and for investigating potential security incidents.
5. Automated Drift Detection and Correction:
   • Challenge Addressed: Misleading insights and uncontrolled schema copies.
   • Solution: DBmaestro automatically detects and corrects configuration drifts between different database environments. This ensures that generative AI models are working with consistent and accurate data, preventing misleading insights.
6. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC):
   • Challenge Addressed: Unauthorized access and data leakage.
   • Solution: DBmaestro’s RBAC feature ensures that only authorized personnel have access to sensitive data and database management functions. This minimizes the risk of data leakage and unauthorized modifications.
7. Continuous Monitoring and Threat Detection:
   • Challenge Addressed: Exposure of sensitive data and compliance breaches.
   • Solution: DBmaestro provides detection capabilities, identifying potential security threats in real-time and enabling prompt action to mitigate risks. This proactive approach helps in maintaining the security and integrity of generative AI deployments.

In conclusion, as organizations embrace generative AI, they must prioritize metadata management and security. Database DevSecOps, with solutions like DBmaestro, provides the necessary framework to mitigate security risks, ensure compliance, and deliver accurate AI insights. By adopting these practices, organizations can securely and efficiently leverage the power of generative AI, driving innovation and business success.

As DBAs and CISOs, we understand the criticality of securing our corporate databases. In today’s dynamic development landscape, where multiple development teams access schemas for diverse business needs, the traditional approach of siloed database management simply doesn’t cut it anymore. This is where Database DevSecOps (DevSecOps for Databases) comes in, offering a powerful solution to enhance security while streamlining development processes.

The Challenge: Juggling Agility with Security

The rise of Agile methodologies has revolutionized software development, promoting faster release cycles and closer collaboration between development and operations teams. This agility, however, can introduce new security risks, especially when it comes to database change management. With multiple developers potentially modifying schemas concurrently, the potential for unauthorized access, undocumented changes, accidental errors, and vulnerabilities increases significantly.

The Answer: Embracing Secure Database Change Management

The answer lies in implementing a secure database change management process. This involves automating database deployments, enforcing strict access controls, and continuously monitoring for suspicious activity. Here’s where Single Sign-On (SSO) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Password Vaults, Role Base Access Control (RBAC)  and Policy Enforcement become essential building blocks.

The Two layers Double shield:

• The Passive Layer: Forging extra authentication and authorization
• The Dynamic layer: A proactive security watch dog for changes.

Passive Shield: Authentication and Authorization

The first line of defense in our Double Shield is a passive shield focused on user authentication and authorization. This layer utilizes the following measures:

• Single Sign-On (SSO): Imagine a world where developers only need to log in once to access all the resources they need, including databases. SSO centralizes authentication, eliminating the need for managing multiple credentials and reducing the risk of password fatigue. This simplifies access management for developers while strengthening security.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): MFA adds an extra layer of protection by requiring a secondary verification step beyond just a username and password. This could be a code sent to your phone, a fingerprint scan, or a security token. MFA significantly reduces the risk of unauthorized access, even if a developer’s credentials are compromised.
• Password Vaults: As mentioned earlier, password vaults securely store database credentials, eliminating the need for developers to know them directly. This further strengthens security by removing the risk of credential leakage or misuse if a developer’s device is compromised.

These passive measures act as the initial barrier, preventing unauthorized access and ensuring only authorized users can enter the database environment.

Dynamic Protection: RBAC and Policy Enforcement

The second layer of our Double Shield is a dynamic protection layer that actively controls database activity. This layer leverages the following:

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Imagine a hierarchy of access permissions within your database environment. RBAC allows you to define these permissions based on user roles. For example, a developer role may include permissions to access lower environment in one project, and a permission to access a higher environment in another project. This granular control ensures that developers only have the access they absolutely need to perform their tasks, minimizing the potential for accidental or malicious activity.
• Policy Enforcement: Think of policy enforcement as a set of automated rules that govern what changes can be made to your database and how. These policies can cover various aspects, such as mandatory code reviews for sensitive changes, restrictions on specific data types, alert for wrong practices, bad coding, security challenged code and adherence to data governance regulations. By automatically enforcing these policies, the system acts as a real-time guardrail, preventing unauthorized or non-compliant modifications that could compromise database security.

Why SSO and MFA, PW vaults, RBAC and Policy enforcement Matter for Database DevSecOps

By integrating the double shield into your CI/CD pipeline, you achieve several crucial benefits:

• Reduced Attack Surface: Limiting access points through SSO minimizes the area vulnerable to potential attacks.
• Enhanced User Experience: Developers can access all necessary resources seamlessly, boosting productivity.
• Improved Compliance, adherence to industry regulations.
• Streamlined Auditing: clearer audit trails, simplifying security investigations.

DBmaestro: Building the Database Fortress

DBmaestro, a leading DevSecOps platform for databases, takes secure database change management to the next level by seamlessly integrating the Double Shield security approach into its core functionalities. Here’s how DBmaestro builds your secure database fortress:

Leveraging the Passive Shield:

• SSO and Password Vault Integration: DBmaestro integrates with leading SSO providers, allowing developers to access database resources with a single login. This eliminates the need for managing multiple credentials and reduces the risk of password fatigue or misuse. Additionally, DBmaestro can leverage password vaulting solutions. When a developer needs to access a database, DBmaestro retrieves the credentials securely from the vault using secure communication protocols, further reducing the risk of unauthorized access.

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Support: DBmaestro doesn’t directly implement MFA, but it sseamlessly integrates with existing MFA solutions. This allows organizations to leverage the additional security layer provided by MFA. For example, a developer might use their fingerprint or a security token alongside their SSO login to access the database through DBmaestro. This adds a crucial layer of protection, even if a developer’s credentials are compromised.

Fortifying the Dynamic Protection Layer:

• Granular RBAC with User Role Management: DBmaestro allows you to define user roles with granular access permissions. These roles map directly to your development workflows, ensuring developers only have the access they need to perform their specific tasks. For example, a developer working on a new feature might have access to a specific environment, while a tester might only have access for verification purposes. When a developer’s role within the organization changes, their access automatically adjusts based on the new role’s permissions. This eliminates manual updates and ensures they only have the required access, minimizing privilege creep.
• Automated Policy Enforcement Throughout the CI/CD Pipeline: DBmaestro empowers you to define comprehensive security policies that govern all aspects of database change management. These policies can be integrated directly into your CI/CD pipeline. Here’s how DBmaestro enforces these policies:
  • Dry Run: a Pre-deployment Check. DBmaestro automatically scans proposed database changes against your defined security policies before deployment. This ensures that only compliant changes are deployed to production, preventing the introduction of vulnerabilities or unauthorized modifications.
  • (Code Reviews for Sensitive Changes: For critical changes or those that impact specific data types, DBmaestro can enforce mandatory code reviews. This allows senior developers or security teams to review the changes before deployment, adding an extra layer of scrutiny and reducing the risk of errors.

Building a FedRAMP-Compliant Fortress:

DBmaestro’s security features are built from the ground up to meet the stringent requirements of FedRAMP. Here’s how it contributes to FedRAMP compliance:

• Access Control Best Practices: By enforcing RBAC and integrating with SSO, DBmaestro adheres to FedRAMP’s access control best practices, ensuring only authorized users can access sensitive data.
• Audit Logging and Traceability: DBmaestro provides comprehensive audit logs that track all database activities. This detailed record-keeping facilitates security investigations and demonstrates compliance with FedRAMP’s audit requirements.
• Secure Communication Protocols: DBmaestro leverages secure communication protocols for all data transmission, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of data at rest and in transit.

Key Takeaways:

Traditional database management struggles to keep pace with the demands of Agile development. Secure database change management is essential for protecting data in multi-developer environments.

Double Shield Security Approach:

• SSO and MFA Integration: DBmaestro integrates with leading SSO providers and supports existing MFA solutions, ensuring a strong first line of defense through streamlined authentication and an extra layer of verification.
• Granular RBAC with User Role Management: DBmaestro empowers you to define user roles with fine-grained access controls. This ensures developers only have the permissions they need for their specific tasks, minimizing the potential for human error or malicious activity.
• Automated Policy Enforcement: DBmaestro allows you to define and enforce security policies throughout the CI/CD pipeline. Pre-deployment checks ensure only compliant changes are deployed, while mandatory code reviews for sensitive changes add an extra layer of scrutiny.

Conclusion:

DBmaestro empowers organizations to build a secure database fortress by design. Leveraging the Double Shield approach, DBmaestro integrates seamlessly with existing security solutions and enforces security policies throughout the development lifecycle. This ensures that organizations can achieve the agility of Agile development while maintaining robust database security and achieving FedRAMP compliance. By simplifying secure database change management, DBmaestro allows organizations to focus on innovation while protecting their critical data assets.

The GDPR and the Protection of Personal Data

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enforced by the European Union (EU), is a comprehensive regulation designed to protect the personal data of EU citizens. Here are some key aspects of GDPR compliance for databases:

Lawful Basis for Processing: Organizations must have a legal justification for collecting and processing personal data. This could include consent from the individual, a contractual necessity, or a legal obligation.

Data Minimization: The GDPR emphasizes collecting only the minimum personal data necessary for a specific purpose. Storing unnecessary data increases the risk of breaches and reduces compliance.

Data Subject Rights: Individuals have the right to access, rectify, erase, and restrict processing of their personal data. Your database systems should allow for easy retrieval and management of these requests.

Data Security: The GDPR requires appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect personal data from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction.

SOX and Financial Data Security

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) applies to publicly traded companies in the United States and aims to ensure the accuracy and reliability of financial reporting. While not directly focused on data privacy, SOX has implications for database security:

Internal Controls: SOX mandates strong internal controls to safeguard financial data. This includes access controls, audit trails, and data backup procedures for your financial databases.

Data Integrity: SOX emphasizes maintaining the accuracy and completeness of financial data. Regular data validation and reconciliation processes within your databases are essential.

HIPAA and the Protection of Healthcare Data

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) safeguards the privacy of protected health information (PHI) of patients in the United States. Key points for HIPAA compliance in databases include:

Limited Data Use and Disclosure: PHI can only be used and disclosed for specific healthcare purposes, with patient authorization. Database access controls should restrict access to authorized personnel.

Data Security Standards: HIPAA requires implementing administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to protect patient data. Encryption of sensitive data and secure access protocols are crucial for your healthcare databases.

Breach Notification: In the event of a data breach involving PHI, HIPAA mandates reporting to affected individuals and relevant authorities.

Building a Culture of Database Compliance with DBmaestro

Regulatory compliance is an ongoing process, and your database is at the center of it all. DBmaestro empowers your databases to become champions of compliance by ensuring the integrity, security, and auditability of your database. Here’s how:

Automated Database Change Management: Manual database changes are error-prone and difficult to track for audits. DBmaestro streamlines the change management process by automating deployments, enforcing version control, and enabling rollbacks to compliant states in case of errors. This ensures consistent, secure changes to your database schema.

Continuous Database Auditing: DBmaestro provides comprehensive audit trails that capture all modifications made to your database structure and data. These detailed logs are essential for demonstrating compliance with regulations like SOX, which mandate a clear record of database activity.

Database Access Permissions: DBmaestro provides user permission management and role-based Access Control (RBAC), ensuring only authorized users have access to specific database elements based on their roles (principle of least privilege).

Optimizing Database Compliance with DBmaestro

While DBmaestro focuses on the database itself, it indirectly contributes to a broader culture of compliance by significantly improving the quality of your database change process. Here’s how:

Automated Change Management Policies: Manual database changes are error-prone and time-consuming. DBmaestro streamlines the process by implementing automated change management policies. These policies can define pre-approved scripts, enforce specific testing procedures, and ensure all changes adhere to established guidelines. This reduces the risk of errors and inconsistencies during deployments.

Dry-Run Testing and Rollback Capabilities: DBmaestro facilitates comprehensive dry-run testing before deploying changes to your production database. These tests simulate the impact of the changes on a separate environment, allowing you to identify and rectify any potential issues before they affect real data. Additionally, DBmaestro’s robust rollback capabilities ensure you can revert to a compliant state if necessary. This proactive approach minimizes the risk of disruptive deployments and ensures high-quality database changes.

Reduced Risk of Human Error: Automating database tasks with DBmaestro minimizes the potential for human error during deployments, change management, and data manipulation. This reduces the risk of accidental breaches or non-compliance.

Conclusion

DBmaestro empowers your databases to become strong foundations for regulatory compliance. By automating critical tasks, ensuring robust security, and maintaining a complete audit trail, DBmaestro simplifies the journey towards achieving and maintaining database compliance. Remember, data privacy is not just about legal requirements; it’s about building trust with your customers, patients, and stakeholders. DBmaestro can be your partner in achieving a secure and compliant database environment.

This article sheds light on this critical issue, specifically focusing on the limitations of native database functionalities in providing comprehensive audit trails. We then explore how DBmaestro, a leading database release automation platform, empowers organizations to automate database changes and generate robust, high-resolution audit reports that address the most stringent compliance demands.

The Compliance Imperative: Why Audit Trails Matter

Financial institutions grapple with regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), healthcare entities navigate HIPAA and HITRUST, while publicly traded companies adhere to SEC regulations. All require a demonstrably controlled database environment. An audit trail acts as the cornerstone of such control, facilitating:

• Compliance Audits: Regulatory bodies may request detailed audit trails to verify adherence to database security and integrity standards. A comprehensive audit trail aids in demonstrating a robust change management process and mitigates the risk of hefty fines or reputational damage.
• Database Lineage Tracking: Understanding how metadata flows through the database system is crucial. Audit trails help map database lineage, enabling quick identification of potential database change quality issues and ensuring accurate reporting.
• Security Incident Response: In the event of a security breach, audit trails provide invaluable forensic evidence. By tracing specific changes and user activity, organizations can pinpoint the source of the incident and expedite remediation efforts.

The Limitations of Native Database Auditing

Many database platforms offer built-in audit logging capabilities. However, these features fall short in several key areas:

• Limited Scope: Native logging often focuses on broad events like login attempts and schema changes, neglecting granular details of metadata modifications. This lack of detail hinders compliance efforts.
• Incompleteness: Native logs frequently lack context surrounding changes. Information such as which specific database points were modified, by whom, and why remains elusive.
• Metadata Retention Challenges: Storing voluminous audit logs on the production database can impact performance and create storage bottlenecks. Additionally, native logs often lack built-in archival capabilities, potentially leading to metadata change loss.

These limitations leave organizations with fragmented audit trails, hindering their ability to achieve true database governance and meet regulatory demands.

The Power of Automation: DBmaestro as Your Audit Trail Hero

DBmaestro offers a revolutionary solution. Automating the entire database release lifecycle, not only streamlines database change management but also lays the foundation for generating comprehensive, high-resolution audit trails. Here’s how DBmaestro empowers you to achieve compliance nirvana:

1. Meticulous Change Tracking: DBmaestro meticulously tracks all schema modifications, including the creation, alteration, and deletion of tables, columns, indexes, and other database objects. This comprehensive metadata change tracking ensures a complete picture of all activity within the database schema. This eliminates the risk of human error and ensures having a complete picture of all activity.
2. Contextual Richness: Beyond capturing the “what” of changes, DBmaestro provides invaluable context. The “who” behind the change, the specific metadata modified, and the timestamp are automatically recorded. Additionally, DBmaestro integrates with version control systems, enabling you to link each change to its corresponding code commit, providing a holistic view of the development lifecycle.
3. Approval Workflows: DBmaestro enforces robust approval workflows, ensuring only authorized users can make changes. The audit trail captures the approval history for each change, fostering accountability and transparency.
4. Granular Reporting: DBmaestro empowers you to generate detailed reports tailored to specific needs. Whether you require a comprehensive audit trail encompassing all changes within a timeframe or a report focused on alterations to a particular database schema, DBmaestro provides the flexibility to meet your requirements.
5. Secure Archiving: Audit trails generated through DBmaestro are securely stored in a separate, dedicated repository, eliminating potential performance impacts on your production database. This dedicated storage ensures the integrity and long-term availability of your audit metadata, ensuring compliance with database retention regulations.

The Synergy of Automation and Audit Trails:

It’s crucial to understand that a comprehensive audit trail is not an isolated feature. It’s the natural byproduct of a well-defined and automated database change management process. DBmaestro facilitates such automation, ensuring a controlled and auditable database environment.

Conclusion: Building the Bridge to Audit Nirvana

For compliance officers grappling with the limitations of native database auditing functionalities, the quest for robust audit trails can feel like chasing a lottery win without a ticket. DBmaestro offers the winning formula: automated database change management. By automating the entire process, DBmaestro empowers organizations to generate comprehensive, high-resolution audit trails that meet the most demanding regulatory requirements.

Don’t settle for fragmented, incomplete audit trails that leave you vulnerable to compliance gaps and security risks. Embrace automation with DBmaestro and unlock the power of a transparent, auditable database environment. However, securing a robust audit trail goes beyond the sole power of the compliance officer. Building the right corporate coalition is crucial. Collaborate with IT and development teams to champion the importance of automated change management. Highlight how DBmaestro streamlines their workflows and fosters a collaborative environment. By building consensus and demonstrating the benefits for all stakeholders, you’ll pave the way for a more secure and compliant database ecosystem.

There is a growing emphasis on database compliance today due to the stricter enforcement of compliance rules and regulations to safeguard user privacy. For example, GDPR fines can reach £17.5 million or 4% of annual global turnover (the higher of the two applies). Besides the direct monetary implications, companies also need to prioritize compliance to protect their brand reputation and achieve growth.

Traditional database compliance processes involve manual audits, ongoing monitoring of roles, and active enforcement of corporate policies. But with today’s dynamic nature of DevOps pipelines, with dozens or hundreds of stakeholders scattered in multiple locations, the manual approach to compliance is not effective anymore. Another huge pain point is the surfacing of human errors and issues that “slip between the cracks”.

Continuous Database Compliance Automation allows you to smoothly implement compliance and security measures into your DevOps delivery pipeline. Through advanced automation, CCA continuously runs checks of all changes and commitments against security standards. CCA brings a number of benefits and is considered a best practice for the software development process.

• Great ROI

Compliance automation reduces costs of non-compliance that, according to the research by Globalscale Technologies, significantly exceed the costs of CCA. The research states that the average compliance cost lies between $0.58 and $21.56 million, whereas the non-compliance expenses add up to $2.20 – $39.22 million. Manual labor reduction, when it comes to complying with regulations together with increasing consistency, leads to a noticeable drop in expenses.

• Prevent Errors

Besides keeping expenses within the predetermined budget, businesses can also minimize costly human errors with CCA. Manual compliance procedures tend to cause errors during data collection, transfer, and analysis. Automation eliminates the need to manually gather and process data which guarantees more accurate and precise results. This in turn enables smoother and faster audits, both internal and external ones, since everything is documented automatically.

• Increase Transparency

Compliance automation includes an ongoing cycle of assessment. If a problem occurs, the CCA tool will alert the team in real-time. Analysts can then determine the policy deviation and resolve the issue. You no longer have to wait for the next scheduled audit to learn about the system’s failures and inconsistencies. Get notified in real-time with CCA for enforcing the highest standards possible at all times.

Besides the aforementioned benefits, Continuous Security Compliance during the entire development cycle is one of the pillars of CI/CD approach. CCA compliments and strengthens the DevOps procedures and accelerates the process of development and deployment, allowing faster time-to-market (TTM) without dropping security standards or quality levels. This is now becoming mandatory.

Lack of Database Compliance Automation – The Main Problems

Much like everything in the tech world, databases can also be exposed to security threats, cyberattacks, and data breaches. Despite the security protection that database vendors offer to their users, databases can still be vulnerable to cyberattacks. What issues can arise from security threats in the database when you are performing all tasks manually without any automation?

• Difficulties with Governance   

Governance in the database is about granting permissions and making sure that only authorized stakeholders get direct access. Controlling permissions allows DBAs to separate duties and specify what can be changed. Without enforced compliance automation that autonomously tracks and controls the access granting, your data might be exposed to unauthorized personnel – a serious data breach or leak risk.

• Difficulties with Tracking Changes

Detailed and comprehensive documentation of changes will simplify the detection of issues as well as guarantee smooth audits. But adding and tracking each and every change manually is a lot of work that is also prone to human errors. CCA tools make sure that every modification finds its way into a common repository where changes and attempts are documented with complete user information.

• Difficulties with Enforcement of Rules and Policies 

Databases often require a variety of different policies and regulations which makes the enforcement difficult and lengthy. GDPR and HIPAA are just a few of the most common policies that companies need to adhere to. CCA tools monitor the adherence to external requirements and keep your database secure. Through ongoing monitoring, DBAs can always stay on top of things.

5 Essential Pillars of Compliance Automation

Database Compliance automation consists of 5 main essential building blocks.

• Database release automation

Release automation allows for error-free frequent deployment. By eliminating bottlenecks and inconsistencies that occur in the database, you reduce the downtime of your application and improve user experience. Top database compliance automation tools provide visual database pipeline builders that allow you to monitor the entire process, including verification, packaging, and deployment.

These tools give you an opportunity to trial-run (dry-run) the release before the production phase to identify possible errors. Fixing bugs in the earlier stage is easier and cheaper and prevents you from developing deeper and more complex issues. Compliance automation tools are programmed to recognize configuration drifts and also challenges that can lead to serious problems after the release.

• Database source control

Source control preserves and tracks historical data about every database change. By keeping everything in one shared document that is automatically synchronized across all users, you end up with a consistent structure and stability. The source control, or version control, checks database modifications against standardized schemas to make sure that changes are in compliance with requirements.

The unified repository with information about who made the change, which changes took place, and why gives you a single structured trusted overview. You can also prevent unauthorized changes that go against the prescribed and documented requirements and standards. Version control management implementation results in a 15% increase in productivity and accelerates time to market by 10 times. 

• Roles and permissions

Compliance is not only about rules and policies but also about roles and permissions. CCA enables correct and smooth permission management best practices such as the “least privilege” philosophy. Adequate permission management reduces risks of data breaches and exposure by granting only that much access to each worker that is necessary to complete their tasks.

Giving too many permissions confuses the process and often leads to confusing documentation and poor structure.  A compliance automation tool will allow you to change the setting for roles and permissions with a couple of clicks. This functionality is extremely crucial with professionals working from home and from multiple locations globally. Doing this manually is simply impossible today.

• Single source of truth

Single source of truth goes back to source control that preserves all the data about changes to databases. A unified repository with shared data about every entry, modification, and deletion allows for quicker report building. This capability is extremely important while working on compliance audits and improving the overall security posture of the organization.

When you have one repository with relevant data, gathering information for reports gets much simpler and faster. You can also be sure that the information is accurate and exhaustive because of its automatic synchronization across devices and users. Not only are you gaining speed, but you are essentially eliminating all chances of mix ups or human errors.

• Enforcement of Rules and Policies

The final pillar of compliance automation elements is enforcing and adhering to rules and policies. These regulations can be external such as GDPR, SOX, and HIPAA. They can also be internal to correspond with your company’s standards. It’s also important to keep in mind that these privacy regulations are constantly changing, something that CCA helps organizations with.

Compliance automation tools offer features that record the information about policies and regulations and make sure the company stays compliant at all times, even after massive changes and revisions in the aforementioned regulations. Instead of doing regular check-ups, you have a tool that continuously does it for you and notifies you when issues arise.

Database Compliance Automation: Optimizing DevOps

DevOps teams today must adhere to strict compliance, governance, and security requirements while creating a leaner operating environment. CCA tools enable them to achieve both of these key goals. They help bolster value stream delivery, while also mitigating risks created by traditional manual processes. They also promote a Shift-Left approach, which is another DevOps essential.

Scaling up by embedding database compliance automation into your pipeline can help you address all regulatory obligations, while also elevating quality and TTM.

But these guidelines go way beyond Europe. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, also known as HIPAA, is a US federal law that applies to Personal Health Information (PHI). The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) has already taken effect in early 2020. Virginia is also planning to launch it’s very own Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA) in early 2023.

Database Compliance: A DevSecOps Essential

Database compliance is a set of regulations that secures customer data and prevents data breaches. It may seem straightforward, but many businesses are still overlooking database compliance automation and its benefits. Exposure or leakage of user data can harm your revenue streams and cause brand damage. In order to avoid unnecessary complications, you need to bake database compliance automation directly into your DevSecOps.

Here are just a few pointers to get started:

• Compliance automation is a DBA essential. As a DBA, you need to be up-to-date with new information concerning the latest compliance regulations regarding the data and code that is stored in your databases. It’s not only about new regulations. The existing ones are constantly being updated and revised with changes that need to be addressed immediately at the database administration level.
• Regardless of the regulations that apply to your business, you need to implement the “least privilege” approach while granting database access. This policy states that users receive the minimum amount of privileges that are sufficient to perform their duties. This is another essential that everyone knows they need, but which is still often overlooked.
• Some vulnerabilities can be easily avoided during the coding process by applying secure coding practices such as building architecture and design for security, as well as transferring sanitized data. The same principles can be implemented in the database to achieve optimal security standards. You can replace manual processes with secure automated practices in line with company policies and regulations.

Related: Top 10 Database Compliance Best Practices

What is Continuous Compliance Automation (CCA)?

The aforementioned best practices should be backed up by a sound DevSecOps approach, which involves a Shift-Left mentality. Compliance needs to be blended into application and database processes. This way, security becomes an essential part of the pipeline and stays relevant throughout the entire process, starting right from the design, all the way to deployment.

In a nutshell, CCA helps organizations eliminate manual involvement in the security compliance process within complex DevOps environments.

CCA tools take care of role management, check your application against the current policies, and store data about all changes made to the database for later audit. The central feature is obviously automation, which reduces risks, promotes faster development speed with fewer bottlenecks, and requires less post-release patching. Being a part of DevSecOps, CCA tools also smoothen the collaboration across the various departments in the organization.

These strategies will help you implement the automation and transition faster.

1 – Deal with configuration drifts before they become a problem
Since DevOps is built upon driving frequent updates, modifications in databases also need to become iterative to keep up with the other parts of the pipeline. The problem is though that databases still require a good amount of manual work which often leads to configuration drifts. The main culprit – direct out of process (undocumented) changes made directly to the database.

Release bottlenecks are created due to conflicting changes that are not in sync with the main release or unique changes to some of the environments. This results in the creation of inconsistencies between the databases that should ideally be identical for a smooth release. The centralized nature of CCA tools helps in monitoring the changes and identifying the discrepancies early on.

Related: Demystifying Database Configuration Drifts

2 – Ensure compliance with relevant policies
Developers and IT teams are familiar with policies and standards when it comes to writing code, but they often lack knowledge of database regulations and requirements. As a result, the problems start surfacing only after the release. DBAs at the same time, are making changes manually, which in itself slows down the process, creates bottlenecks, and leads to human errors.

Compliance automation tools not only help automate the pipeline completely,  but also make sure the database is in-line with the policy at all times. The system will identify possible issues and notify you, allowing you to exclude bad code before it damages the performance of the application or creates regulatory risks that may put your database information at risk.

3 – Enforce Database Source Control
Implementing and enforcing database source control helps with a critical goal – creating a defined starting point for deployments. Once that point has been established, everything becomes easier. This means you can start version controlling crucial aspects such as schemas, builds, validations, comparisons, and all related procedures to enhance quality and productivity.

A sound source control solution should be able to generate creation scripts for all database objects, while allowing seamless deployments and roll backs from specific versions, also in production. It should also be capable of rebuilding or tearing down a database in any pre-production environment for maximizing flexibility. Only specified personnel should be able to perform these actions.

You should also be familiar with release concepts for the database. For a detailed overview of state and migration-based deployments, follow the link below:

State-Driven vs Migration-Driven DB Deployments

DBmaestro: Compliance Automation for DevSecOps

The benefits that DevSecOps brings cannot be overstated. With this mindset, CCA solutions help onboard the entire organization to enhance security.

Firstly, they improve automation and security procedures, while helping accelerate the entire software development life cycle (SDLC). Secondly, they also improve communication between the various teams (and departments), enhance visibility, and help shift the focus to quality improvement. Let’s take a closer look at the advantages of this automated approach.

1. Roles and Permissions – With DBmaestro, your life as a DBA becomes much easier. You can implement the “least privilege” philosophy easily, while also enforcing policies that have been created in accordance with the latest regulatory developments. Roles and permissions can be revoked or edited with just a few clicks. A huge step towards compliance.
2. Automated Reports and Audit Trails – Simply put, Continuous Automation Compliance (CCA) solutions generate audit trails smoothly without requiring human intervention like before. Forget the long and cumbersome Excel documents that were a nightmare to manage on an ongoing basis. You can now generate and share reports with a few clicks.
3. Better Damage Control and Mitigation Times – Database Continuous Automation Compliance drastically reduces the risk of undetected human errors when it comes to fixing bottlenecks and post-deployment issues. It enhances visibility and adds prediction into your processes which makes it easier to identify version drifts and other inconsistencies.

Besides advancing your delivery pipeline in general, DevSecOps empowers the DBAs, IT teams, and of course the developers. You essentially get self-sufficient teams by providing them with an automated pipeline for continuous development, testing, and deployment, with all security and compliance prerequisites baked in. They become active shareholders in the process.

Switch to a Proactive Mindset with Database Compliance Automation

The bottom line is that you need to govern your database releases and operations with a proactive approach and automate processes to promote a Shift-Left mindset shift with your database, IT, and development teams. Doing so with a DevSecOps approach will enhance consistency, traceability, and audibility – all key components when it comes to compliance.

Database compliance automation tools for DevOps are changing and evolving rapidly as there many vendors that cover different subdomains across applications, infrastructure and databases. You need to make sure that the solution you are implementing is able to integrate with top DevOps tools, has scaling-up capabilities, and provides ease-of-use with quick onboarding.

The business impact of having a database Continuous Compliance Automation solution cannot be understated. It will help you enforce security and compliance across the entire database domain, essentially completing the missing link in your SDLC. You’ll be wasting less time and resources on patching holes, while also creating a seamless DevOps pipeline for optimal results.

You can now use policy-driven automated controls to scale up fast, without sacrificing quality or security. Automate your database compliance and security now.

• The importance of database audits in ensuring security and compliance.
• Key activities that should be audited in a database environment.
• Popular database auditing tools and their capabilities.
• How to manage audits for databases across different platforms.

With the new GDPR regulations kicking in, data protection rules will need to be integrated into the application, product, or service from the initial phase so that a team is well versed at every level and defaults to code that protects the data. This piece will cover key areas for the successful implementation of database audits.

Important Activities to Audit

There are lots of components attached to your data, and any one of them can become a reason for data breach or theft. For instance, when you install and configure a new database instance, it creates a starter database with a default configuration including users and passwords.

Pro Tip: Make sure to regularly audit privileged user access and database object permissions to prevent unauthorized changes and potential data breaches.

This may create a database vulnerability due to the fact that a database user, such as a DBA, may have permission to edit data in tables or change permissions on default schemas so that he can access data even if he is not allowed to. So let’s review some of the important activities that need to be audited for security and compliance reasons.

User Access and Authentication

This is the entry point for any culprit from within or outside an organization. A privileged user may be able to change or extract financial information from customer data or he may try to access the system at a time when he is not allowed to with wrong intentions.

Auditing these activities helps companies identify a data breach before it is too late or at least assist with  implementing better security configurations to stop losses from occurring.

Database Objects

Database objects that either hold user or company data, as well as procedures or logics that define the functionality of a system, and people with permission on these objects can all manipulate the structure and thus become a reason for data corruption or data theft on a continuous basis. And none of this can be tracked if auditing is not enabled.

Auditing should be implemented for all important tables, views, procedures, database links, and runtime logical flows that control certain functionality for business applications.

Data

The most critical part of any organization is its data. There can be many users who might have permission to manipulate data, and it is important that all confidential and restricted data should not be edited by other unauthorized users.

Identifying and tracking details such as the user, time, data, and change can help companies comply with many data compliance rules, and this auditing function will take on added importance with the new GDPR compliance requirements.

Network

Data today is also huge and mobile. You may have something on-premise as well as some in the public cloud, which may demand a large amount of networking. Auditing a network will help you understand copious volumes of data and also identify the network resource requirement for better configuration of your network infrastructure.

Additionally, when you move data from one location to another, your data is vulnerable to theft and loss. This means you need to set up transparent data encryptions as well.

Overall Database Utilization

Auditing the overall database utilization can give you an excellent idea of the cost of running a server as well as enable you to be ready for any resource additions and modifications before they are actually needed. You can also configure helpful alerts based on this auditing.

Top Solutions for Database Audits

Pro Tip: When choosing an audit solution, opt for tools that allow for policy-based auditing, enabling you to tailor audits to your organization’s specific security and compliance needs.

Different databases provide various options for auditing data at different levels. Here are some of the top database engines and their auditing features.

Oracle Database 12c

This system allows for optimized database audits via policies and conditions. Oracle has consolidated and combined its two security products—Audit Vault and Database Firewall—into one product, so that users can enjoy a unified audit data trail.

Compared to previous versions, Oracle Database 12c provides better auditing by providing a targeted, precise, and context-based logging configuration. This improves performance via reduced overhead for the logging of audit data, and also improves on the reporting of audited data as it is already captured in a consolidated fashion.

For example, policies can be configured to audit on different levels, including IP addresses, programs, time duration, or the network access type used in authentication. Oracle can also keep audit trails in the database or in audit log files that should be monitored regularly.

Db2

When enabled, IBM’s db2audit generates the audit logs for a set of database operations. Audit trails can be found in the log files generated on the file system, and can use the db2audit tool to configure and monitor audit-related information at the instance or database level.

There are implications of enabling auditing on a partitioned database, due to the fact that a majority of audited database activities occur in associated database partitions, and it is possible that a number of audit records generated will be based on the number of database partitions for an activity on the one object. This is because each record should be able to identify the database partition where the activity occurred.

MySQL Enterprise Audit

This solution enables user-friendly policy-based auditing. Once the audit plugin is enabled, users can define options for what needs to be audited. Audit logs are securely generated in XML format and can be viewed with any viewer tool. Audit logs can be encrypted, and then shared and decrypted by other third-party tools with the key for analysis. Additionally, the new enhancement saves on storage by generating compressed log files.

Many databases have built-in capabilities that can provide auditing tools, but meeting compliance requirements is just as important a part of database security.

 Preparing for Strenuous Security Requirements

Organizations are now at the height of preparation for GDPR. Of course, this is not the first data-security measure to be introduced, and organizations have already had issues dealing with existing compliance laws, such as the EU’s Data Protection Directive (which the GDPR is replacing), and HIPAA in the US. It is going to be even harder for DevOps engineers to adopt the right measures before the GDPR is enforced this May and thus essential for them to bring themselves up to speed with the current concept of Data Protection by Design.

The responsibility for implementing auditing protocols on database activities lies in the hands of the relevant team leads or DevOps engineers, depending on organizational structure. Auditing should be in the hands of a single owner, and blocked for editing and access by others. Auditing tools and plugins can help with easy setup and reporting of compliance as well.

Tools to the Rescue

What if your enterprise makes use of all three databases we discussed? And maybe MSSQL and MongoDB too? Would it be easy to manage the configuration and setup of your audits and then go through each log separately? Nope.

Nowadays, as most items are scattered between cloud and on-premise, you need to look for tools and third-party options that can provide a single window to cater to all of your auditing and compliance needs. Policy-enforced database security and auditing software are required to easily configure, manage, and monitor database activities.

DBmaestro’s Database DevOps Platform is such a tool — the perfect solution to serve the auditing and compliance requirements of multiple databases while also enabling you to take actions based on the database audit trails. Additional coverage includes documentation on database compliance and assistance with the overall process of development to deployment.

The main function of any DevOps team is to keep your data secure and that’s something that DBmaestro’s Database DevOps Platform is uniquely designed to facilitate.

GDPR is just the latest regulation for data security; many regulations came before it and many will follow. Staying on top of database security — especially when dealing with multiple databases from different providers — is crucial to your organization’s health. Database audits are critical for keeping a detailed history of actions taken, and should be done correctly and thoroughly across all platforms.

Key Takeaways

• Database audits are essential for ensuring compliance with security regulations like GDPR
• Key areas to audit include user access, database objects, and overall database utilization.
• Tools like Oracle Database 12c, IBM Db2, and MySQL Enterprise Audit provide robust audit functionalities.
• A unified DevOps platform like DBmaestro simplifies audit management across multiple databases and environments.

Manual management of database permissions is a recipe for a disaster

There is no way around the fact that employees require access to specific environments to do their jobs. Every single employee who needs access to the database requires a set of permissions: Devs, DBAs, compliance officers. And the list goes on and on.

When it comes to the databases, permission management processes are, for the most part, manual. Most organizations lack a centralized depository to document and manage user permissions. And this causes serious problems.

Database permissions are usually not well organized. We have zero visibility with too many passwords and permissions; we can’t know who has what permissions and why. Moreover, there is the issue of weak, stolen, and reused credentials and the resulting security risks.

On the one hand, privileged access exposes the organization to risks. On the other hand, if we follow the least privileged access, we end up with bottlenecks and lack of productivity.  So you either have a mess with permissions sprawling out of control, or you cut everything down, giving only the DBA access to enter the database, creating bottlenecks.

In other words – it’s a lose-lose scenario.

Privileged access exposes organizations to risk

Since it is not always known who needs to do what exactly, and tasks change from time to time, what often happens is that every user ends up with the highest permissions possible. This creates an unhealthy and dangerous situation where many people have high-level permissions to access the database.

This issue is exacerbated by the endemic use of weak, unsecured, and reused passwords in enterprise environments.

Weak, unsecured, or reused passwords

When users need to manually login into the system to perform tasks, there are severe security risks involved.

Think about your own usage of passwords. Nobody likes to admit it, but the vast majority of users routinely reuse passwords across multiple, if not all, sites. An average person has 70-80 passwords, and it is simply humanly impossible for users to remember 80 unique login/password combinations.

Over the course of the last several years, billions of login credentials have landed in the hands of hackers as a result of data breaches. Password reuse combined with credential dumps is a ticking bomb.

Moreover, there is a risk of phishing and keylogger attacks. What ends up happening when a user unwittingly exposes their password to a threat actor is that the threat actor gets access to everything the user has access to.

This is an especially salient issue right now when many users access enterprise resources from unsecured home networks and devices.

The least privilege access principle creates bottlenecks

So the solution seems obvious – let’s adhere to the least privilege principle instead, and therefore reduce the complexity of permissions to the very minimum. If we cut everything down, and give only the DBA access to enter the database we will no longer have sprawling permissions. Problem solved!

Not so fast. We might have reduced the complexity, but now we created a bottleneck where only a few people can do anything on the database. The lack of self-service to your developers will bring your release process to a standstill until the DBA manually pushes required changes. The problem creates a host of productivity issues and brings the CI/CD process to a halt whenever the database is involved.

So what did we achieve here? We traded complexity and high risk for lack of productivity and loss of agility. Not a situation any of us would consider ideal.

Lack of visibility

When permissions are managed manually, there is no centralized control, and nobody has any visibility into who has what permissions and why.

A postmortem analysis becomes difficult when damage is done as you can’t determine which user caused issues, when and where.

Automating roles and permissions management for database deployments

So it is clear that we need to bring order to chaos. There are two ways to go about it. You can make it into an ad-hoc project that you need to maintain and manually and grant and revoke permissions whenever a person comes onboard or leaves the company. You will end up neck deep in a  complex and lengthy project,  wasting lots of time setting up permissions for all users.  This is far from ideal.

Flexible and fully automated role-based permissions management allows you to maintain the appropriate balance of collaboration and control while giving you peace of mind that your data is secure and protected.

How does the DBmaestro’s database roles and permissions management work

DBmaestro links database permissions to the domain permissions.  Instead of manually granting and revoking permissions to individual users, we allow organizations to link existing permissions – for example, from Active Directory – to user roles and the corresponding access levels to the database.

For example when a user has domain permissions, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they also automatically get necessary permissions to your Oracle, MySQL, MsSQL etc.

But suppose we base access to the database on a person’s role, instead of individual user credentials and automatically grant them correct permission? We create a separation between the database and the users themselves while at the same time granting access to relevant users.

DBmaestro replaces all direct permissions with roles, defines release pipeline, and through the release pipe configures which environments need access by which users.

The bottom line: when permissions are configured via roles, you don’t need to manage the role permission at the user level. This is a simple yet elegant and powerful solution that solves many problems we talked about.

How DBmaestro simplifies roles and permissions management

First of all, the moment you’ve introduced Role-Based Access Control for your database, you reduce the permissions problem’s complexity. Once you’ve set up permissions for a DBA role – whenever a DBA comes or goes, you simply assign or remove the user’s role once, and all permissions are automatically granted.

Second, your users no longer access your database via their credentials since we remove user-level permissions and set up permissions based on the role.

For example, if you are a Developer, you may release to QA; if you are DBA or a DevOps person – you may release to production.

Instead of connecting directly to the environment, now the developer connects to DBmaestro, and DBmaestro connects to the QA on their behalf. It means that the developer doesn’t know the credentials to the QA and, therefore, cannot expose those credentials, either willingly or by accident.

The power of a structured process

Two things happened here- not only did we reduce complexity and boosted security, but we introduced a structured process.

Automatically document every action

DBmaestro manages permissions in a structured way and documents every action that happens. Everything is automatically documented – what the user did in the system as well as the feedback from the server.  This is no longer a user who went in and out, and you don’t know what they did.

Block non-policy and dangerous actions

DBmaestro not only manages the access control, but also analyzes the content of the changes and blocks non-policy, dangerous, unsecured actions.

DBmaestro detects and automatically disallows dangerous actions as defined by your policies. For example, if a user wants to drop a table, which may be risky, the command will not be executed, and they will be immediately alerted to change the command. Or if a user tries to provide a “grant all” access permission, DBmaestro will immediately pop up with a warning to specify permissions as required by company policy.

Through the structured process, no longer can accidental exposures of your database happen, runtime errors are eliminated, and downtime and data loss prevented.

Taking it to the next level with CyberArk integration

So now you have a structured process, where everything is documented, and policies are automatically enforced. The next step is taking our permissions game to the next level by adding CyberArk or other password vaults to the mix.

With CyberArk integration, even DBmaestro no longer knows the passwords to your environments. As a result, developers don’t know the passwords, DBAs don’t know the passwords, and even DBmaestro no longer knows the password.

At the same time, the release process is not hindered and users can freely release to assigned environments and perform authorized actions via DBmaestro.

With DBmaestro and CyberArk integration, you can achieve the holy grail of permission management where nobody knows their credentials but can perform whatever actions their role in the company requires.

Compliant database DevOps stands at the core of financial risk management today. This allows companies to consistently document and communicate any kind of risk information to the right stakeholder (usually legal executives), a key compliance requirement today. More on this in the next section.

Unfortunately, database compliance is challenging on many levels in the financial sector. Let’s take a closer look at the underlying issues.

Top Regulatory Requirements for Databases

All top compliance protocols today have clearly mentioned databases as key components when it comes to safeguarding personal information and data.

The top regulatory compliance protocols in effect today include:

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

GDPR is a landmark regulation that has changed the regulatory landscape forever. While this set of data privacy protection rules apply to organizations operating in the European Union, it has had a ripple effect on the global regulatory landscape, essentially making it a global protocol.

Not only does the GDPR sharpen the requirements around the collection of personal data, it also specifies who is accountable when it comes to data breaches. Organizations (Controllers) using third-party solutions ( Processors) have to take full responsibility for breaches and need to report them in a timely manner or face significant fines.

In a nutshell, as a DBA you need to put database protocols in place to organize, document, and store all metadata and approvals in a centralized and secured place to pass your GDPR audits.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)

The SOX act is essentially the requirement to connect all financial reports to an Internal Controls Report. Introduced all the way back in 2002, SOX was created to contain the growing number of fraudulent activity cases in the USA. Companies were forced to change the way they operate. This included DBAs.

DBAs today have to make sure their organization is implementing specific procedures around the safeguarding of financial data, mainly by restricting direct access to it. SOX differs from other compliance protocols due to the fact that it doesn’t involve the protection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

The biggest challenge while enforcing SOX is that while access is restricted and kept to a minimum, it should have a minimal effect on performance.

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)

PCI DSS is essentially a compliance requirement for online entities that are collecting and processing credit card information. Although not yet mandatory everywhere, this is considered the gold standard for credit card compliance. Naturally, the database plays a key part in PCI DSS compliance.

DBAs are now required to adopt a set of best practices to make sure that their database is PCI DSS compliant. These include collaboration with IT professionals to implement a firewall and making sure that all servers are not running on vendor-supplied passwords and ensuring that security best practices are followed on the database level.

Access control also plays a key part in database PCI DSS compliance. All access, remote and on-premise, should be identified and authenticated.

Related: Database Compliance Explained: SOX vs PCI DSS

Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)

FISMA was introduced back in 2002 due to the increasing exchange of personal information on the internet and the demand for improved cybersecurity standards. This security protocol requires responsible stakeholders, DBAs included, to be available during annual inspections and audits.

This compliance regulation requires organizations to create and maintain a detailed inventory of information systems, all properly categorized according to the risk levels they are introducing. There should be a proper security plan in place that is always kept updated as per risk assessments and monitoring data.

Like many other compliance rules, FISMA also gives a lot of importance to federal data (unemployment data, student loans, etc.) encryption.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GBLA)

Also referred to as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, GBLA was created to enable financial flexibility and mobility between various financial and government organizations in the USA, while taking the security and privacy aspects of specific sensitive data into consideration at all times.

The three pillars of GBLA include – the Financial Privacy rule (collection and disclosure of personal data),  the Safeguards rule (implementation of security processes and policies to safeguard information), and the Pretexting rule (to combat identity theft issues and eliminate unauthorized data access).

The data that is safeguarded by GBLA includes social security numbers, credit card information, income patterns, salary histories, and private addresses.

Database Compliance for Secured Data

Clearing the “Data vs Database” confusion

While companies often focus on security solutions like firewalls, manual documentation, and anti-virus software, there is a lot of confusion when it comes to distinguishing between data and the database.

Industry regulations now use data and databases interchangeably. For instance, in the newest formal release of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI) specifies that “controls that meet all of the following conditions… provide ability to restrict access to cardholder data or databases.”

Still, many organizations fail to realize that everything starts and ends with database compliance.

Achieving Database Compliance and Security

Now that we have gone over the most important database compliance regulations and covered the concepts of enforcing them, lets touch on the main steps you will need to take in order to achieve sustainable database compliance and steer clear of legal trouble going ahead.

Map and Categorize Regulatory Requirements

You need to map and categorize your business data in accordance with how each element is impacted by regulations. You will need to be able to answer these questions at any given time: Which data elements are covered by which regulation? What data management changes does the regulation require?

Establish and Enforce Controls and Policies

Your controls and policies need to be enacted so that they help enforce compliance with all regulations. Ensure user/developer database compliance policies are in place to enforce minimal data retention periods, impose stricter privacy sanctions, and mandate improved data quality practices.

Get Your Database Configuration Right

There are many components in your data. You must design a hardened configuration baseline/benchmark for the database platform you are currently using and implement it at all times. Things may get complicated if you are using multiple databases. This is where automation will help you. More on this later.

Don’t Neglect Encryption Protocols

Encrypt all sensitive and personal data with the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which basically uses symmetric key encryption. It has even been approved by the US National Security Agency (NSA). Furthermore,  make sure you are encrypting all communication links with the SSLv3 or TLS protocols.

Elevate Your Internal Compliance Standards

Don’t wait for your annual audit. Many organizations make the mistake of assuming everything is fine if there are no data breaches. But scaling up and adding new features can always lead to trouble. Run bi-annual security reviews and testing programs to achieve compliant database DevOps.

Monitor Your Database 24/7

Complying with GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX is not a one-time thing. Passing your audits with flying colors is great, but you need to make sure things are not changing under your nose. Monitor for database intrusions. Modern monitoring solutions also have customizable alert notifications.

Automate Manual Maintenance Tasks

There are a wide range of database maintenance and user auditing tasks that DBAs need to perform on a constant basis. This includes freeing up disk space, locating potential data errors, detecting hardware issues, and documenting internal stats. Automate these to be more proactive on the compliance front.

Ace Your Audits

You will need to have well-defined roles and permissions to pass your compliance audits. But having them isn’t enough. You will need to enforce them, not before everybody within your organization is informed and trained about them. Achieving database compliance is a cross-department operation.

Related: The Ultimate SOX Compliance Checklist

To sum things up, you will need to be on top of everything that is happening to your database at all times. The main actions include tracking the changes being made to the database, the developers and stakeholders performing the tasks, and also documenting each and every action.

This is why database automation is now powering compliant database DevOps.

Database Automation: Powering Compliance

There are many compliance-related tasks that directly impact database administration. These include actions such as metadata management, data quality, database and data access auditing, data masking and obfuscation, long-term data retention, and database archiving.

DBAs must follow the latest updates in compliance requirements. It’s necessary to find, implement, and manage new compliance-supporting tools, while also performing all regular DBA  tasks that revolve around improving code quality and optimal performance metrics to keep the devs happy.

Furthermore, the DBA is now required to closely document all daily tasks such as change management, creating backups, and recovery procedures.

As more developers and IT professionals are adapting to the remote-work protocols, DBA tasks become even more difficult when it comes to permissions and privileges management.

Faced with such complexity, manual compliance management will no longer work.

This is where centralized process automation and control solutions come into play. With the right tools, duties and roles can be clearly defined, allowing dynamic management of each and every stakeholder within the DevOps ecosystem.

Also, all database activity can now be automatically documented (audit history) for future compliance audits or routine security surveillance activities.

With the right automation tools, DBA can now define who is accessing the database and monitor all actions at all times.

Database deployment automation is another key DBA asset when it comes to accomplishing compliant database DevOps. With a proper version control solution, DBAs can now deploy to testing and production literally by hitting a button. This saves a lot of time, prevents configuration drifts and allows quick rollbacks if needed.

The bottom line is that a comprehensive solution including database deployment automation with security and governance capabilities can help you take your database compliance to the next level. Create, enforce, and manage your updated organizational policy to meet all regulations with zero issues.