Database Security

 Database Security

• Access Control:
• User Accounts & Roles:
• Create unique user accounts with strong passwords.  
• Implement role-based access control (RBAC) to grant permissions based on job functions.  
• Principle of least privilege: Grant users only the necessary permissions to perform their duties.  
• Authentication & Authorization:
• Implement strong authentication mechanisms (e.g., multi-factor authentication).  
• Enforce authorization rules to restrict access to sensitive data.  
• Data Encryption:
• Encrypt Data at Rest: Encrypt data stored on the database server.  
• Encrypt Data in Transit: Encrypt data transmitted over the network.
• Firewalls & Network Security:
• Implement firewalls to protect the database server from unauthorized network access.  
• Utilize network segmentation to isolate the database server from other systems.  
• Vulnerability Management:
• Regularly scan for and patch vulnerabilities in the database software and operating system.  
• Stay updated on security advisories and patches.  
• Input Validation:
• Validate all user input to prevent SQL injection attacks.  
• Use parameterized queries to prevent SQL injection vulnerabilities.  

Types of database security

Network security

• Firewalls serve as the first line of defense in detph (DiD) database security. Logically, a firewall is a separator or restrictor of network traffic, which can be configured to enforce your organization's data security policy. If you use a firewall, you will increase security at the operating system level by providing a chokepoint where your security measures can be focused.

Access management

• Authentication is the process of proving the user is who he or she claims to be by entering the correct user ID and password. Some security solutions allow administrators to centrally manage the identities and permissions of database users in one central location. This includes the minimization of password storage and enables centralized password rotation policies.
• Authorization allows each user to access certain data objects and perform certain database operations like read but not modify data, modify but not delete data, or delete data.

• Access control is managed by the system administrator who assigns permissions to a user within a database. Permissions are ideally managed by adding user accounts to database roles and assigning database-level permissions to those roles. For example, row-level security (RLS) allows database administrators to restrict read and write access to rows of data based on a user's identity, role memberships, or query execution context. RLS centralizes the access logic within the database itself, which simplifies the application code and reduces the risk of accidental data disclosure.

Threat protection

• Auditing tracks database activities and helps maintain compliance with security standards by recording database events to an audit log. This allows you to monitor ongoing database activities, as well as analyze and investigate historical activity to identify potential threats or suspected abuse and security violations.
• Threat detection uncovers anomalous database activities that indicate a potential security threat to the database and can surface information about suspicious events directly to the administrator.

Information protection

• Data encryption secures sensitive data by converting it into an alternative format so only the intended parties can decipher it back to its original form and access it. Although encryption doesn't solve access control problems, it enhances security by limiting data loss when access controls are bypassed. For example, if the database host computer is misconfigured and a malicious user obtains sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, that stolen information might be useless if it’s encrypted.
• Database backup data and recovery is critical to protecting information. This process involves making backup copies of the database and log files on a regular basis and storing the copies in a secure location. The backup copy and file are available to restore the database in the event of a security breach or failure.
• Physical security strictly limits access to the physical server and hardware components. Many organizations with on-premises databases use locked rooms with restricted access for the database server hardware and networking devices. It's also important to limit access to backup media by storing it at a secure offsite location.

Why is it important?

By definition, a data breach is a failure to maintain the confidentiality of data in a database. How much harm a data breach inflicts on your enterprise depends on various consequences or factors:

• Compromised intellectual property: Your intellectual property—trade secrets, inventions, proprietary practices—can be critical to your ability to maintain a competitive advantage in your market. If that intellectual property is stolen or exposed, your competitive advantage can be difficult or impossible to maintain or recover.
  
  
• Damage to brand reputation: Customers or partners might be unwilling to buy your products or services (or do business with your company) if they don’t feel they can trust you to protect your data or theirs.
  
  
• Business continuity (or lack thereof): Some businesses cannot continue to operate until a breach is resolved.
  
  
• Fines or penalties for non-compliance: The financial impact for failing to comply with global regulations such as the Sarbannes-Oxley Act (SAO) or Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), industry-specific data privacy regulations such as HIPAA, or regional data privacy regulations, such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can be devastating, with fines in the worst cases exceeding several million dollars per violation.
  
  
• Costs of repairing breaches and notifying customers: In addition to the cost of communicating a breach to customer, a breached organization must pay for forensic and investigative activities, crisis management, triage, repair of the affected systems and more.

Common threats and challenges

Many software misconfigurations, vulnerabilities or patterns of carelessness or misuse can result in breaches. The following are among the most common types or causes of database security attacks.

Insider threats

An insider threat is a security threat from any one of three sources with privileged access to the database:

• A malicious insider who intends to do harm.
• A negligent insider who makes errors that make the database vulnerable to attack.
• An infiltrator, an outsider who somehow obtains credentials via a scheme, such as phishing or by gaining access to the credential database itself.

Insider threats are among the most common causes of database security breaches and are often the result of allowing too many employees to hold privileged user access credentials.

Human error

Accidents, weak passwords, password sharing and other unwise or uninformed user behaviors continue to be the cause of nearly half of all reported data breaches.

Exploitation of database software vulnerabilities

Hackers make their living by finding and targeting vulnerabilities in all kinds of software, including database management software. All major commercial database software vendors and open source database management platforms issue regular security patches to address these vulnerabilities, but failure to apply these patches in a timely fashion can increase your exposure.

SQL or NoSQL injection attacks

A database-specific threat, these involve the insertion of arbitrary SQL or non-SQLattack strings into database queries that are served by web applications or HTTP headers. Organizations that don’t follow secure web application coding practices and perform regular vulnerability testing are open to these attacks.

Buffer overflow exploitation

Buffer overflow occurs when a process attempts to write more data to a fixed-length block of memory than it is allowed to hold. Attackers can use the excess data, which is stored in adjacent memory addresses, as a foundation from which to start attacks.

Malware

Malware is software that is written specifically to take advantage of vulnerabilities or otherwise cause damage to the database. Malware can arrive via any endpoint device connecting to the database’s network.

Attacks on backups

Organizations that fail to protect backup data with the same stringent controls that are used to protect the database itself can be vulnerable to attacks on backups.

These threats are exacerbated by the following:

• Growing data volumes: Data capture, storage and processing continues to grow exponentially across nearly all organizations. Any data security tools or practices need to be highly scalable to meet near and distant future needs.
  
  
• Infrastructure sprawl: Network environment are becoming increasingly complex, particularly as businesses move workloads to multicloud or hybrid cloud architectures, making the choice, deployment and management of security solutions ever more challenging.
  
  
• Increasingly stringent regulatory requirements: The worldwide regulatory compliance landscape continues to grow in complexity, making adhering to all mandates more difficult.
  
  
• Cybersecurity skills shortage

Denial of service (DoS and DDoS) attacks

In a denial of service (DoS) attack, the attacker deluges the target server—in this case the database server—with so many requests that the server can no longer fulfill legitimate requests from actual users, and, often, the server becomes unstable or crashes.

In a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), the deluge comes from multiple servers, making it more difficult to stop the attack.

 

How Can You Secure Your Database Server?

A database server is a physical or virtual machine running the database. Securing a database server, also known as “hardening”, is a process that includes physical security, network security, and secure operating system configuration.

Ensure Physical Database Security

Refrain from sharing a server for web applications and database applications, if your database contains sensitive data. Although it could be cheaper, and easier, to host your site and database together on a hosting provider, you are placing the security of your data in someone else’s hands.

If you do rely on a web hosting service to manage your database, you should ensure that it is a company with a strong security track record. It is best to stay clear of free hosting services due to the possible lack of security.

If you manage your database in an on-premise data center, keep in mind that your data center is also prone to attacks from outsiders or insider threats. Ensure you have physical security measures, including locks, cameras, and security personnel in your physical facility. Any access to physical servers must be logged and only granted to authorized individuals.

In addition, do not leave database backups in locations that are publicly accessible, such as temporary partitions, web folders, or unsecured cloud storage buckets.

Lock Down Accounts and Privileges

Let’s consider the Oracle database server. After the database is installed, the Oracle database configuration assistant (DBCA) automatically expires and locks most of the default database user accounts.

If you install an Oracle database manually, this doesn’t happen and default privileged accounts won’t be expired or locked. Their password stays the same as their username, by default. An attacker will try to use these credentials first to connect to the database.

It is critical to ensure that every privileged account on a database server is configured with a strong, unique password. If accounts are not needed, they should be expired and locked.

For the remaining accounts, access has to be limited to the absolute minimum required. Each account should only have access to the tables and operations (for example, SELECT or INSERT) required by the user. Avoid creating user accounts with access to every table in the database.

Regularly Patch Database servers

Ensure that patches remain current. Effective database patch management is a crucial security practice because attackers are actively seeking out new security flaws in databases, and new viruses and malware appear on a daily basis.

A timely deployment of up-to-date versions of database service packs, critical security hotfixes, and cumulative updates will improve the stability of database performance.

Disable Public Network Access

Organizations store their applications in databases. In most real-world scenarios, the end-user doesn’t require direct access to the database. Thus, you should block all public network access to database servers unless you are a hosting provider. Ideally, an organization should set up gateway servers (VPN or SSH tunnels) for remote administrators.

Encrypt All Files and Backups

Irrespective of how solid your defenses are, there is always a possibility that a hacker may infiltrate your system. Yet, attackers are not the only threat to the security of your database. Your employees may also pose a risk to your business. There is always the possibility that a malicious or careless insider will gain access to a file they don’t have permission to access.

Encrypting your data makes it unreadable to both attackers and employees. Without an encryption key, they cannot access it, this provides a last line of defense against unwelcome intrusions. Encrypt all-important application files, data files, and backups so that unauthorized users cannot read your critical data.

Database Security Best Practices

Here are several best practices you can use to improve the security of sensitive databases.

Actively Manage Passwords and User Access

If you have a large organization, you must think about automating access management via password management or access management software. This will provide permitted users with a short-term password with the rights they need every time they need to gain access to a database.

It also keeps track of the activities completed during that time frame and stops administrators from sharing passwords. While administrators may feel that sharing passwords is convenient, however, doing so makes effective database accountability and security almost impossible.

In addition, the following security measures are recommended:

• Strong passwords must be enforced
• Password hashes must be salted and stored encrypted
• Accounts must be locked following multiple login attempts
• Accounts must be regularly reviewed and deactivated if staff move to different roles, leave the company, or no longer require the same level of access

Test Your Database Security

Once you have put in place your database security infrastructure, you must test it against a real threat. Auditing or performing penetration tests against your own database will help you get into the mindset of a cybercriminal and isolate any vulnerabilities you may have overlooked.

To make sure the test is comprehensive, involve ethical hackers or recognized penetrations testing services in your security testing. Penetration testers provide extensive reports listing database vulnerabilities, and it is important to quickly investigate and remediate these vulnerabilities. Run a penetration test on a critical database system at least once per year.

Use Real-Time Database Monitoring

Continually scanning your database for breach attempts increases your security and lets you rapidly react to possible attacks.

In particular, File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) can help you log all actions carried out on the database’s server and to alert you of potential breaches. When FIM detects a change to important database files, ensure security teams are alerted and able to investigate and respond to the threat.

Use Web Application and Database Firewalls

You should use a firewall to protect your database server from database security threats. By default, a firewall does not permit access to traffic. It needs to also stop your database from starting outbound connections unless there is a particular reason for doing so.

As well as safeguarding the database with a firewall, you must deploy a web application firewall (WAF). This is because attacks aimed at web applications, including sql injection can be used to gain illicit access to your databases.

A database firewall will not stop most web application attacks, because traditional firewalls operate at the network layer, while web application layers operate at the application layer (layer 7 of the OSI model). A WAF operates at layer 7 and is able to detect malicious web application traffic, such as SQL injection attacks, and block it before it can harm your database.