Auditing

Prashanth Jayaram
Database auditing: Security feature in Azure SQL Database

A quick overview of database audit in SQL

January 28, 2021 by

Database auditing is an important task that helps to guide the organization and can point out areas that can be improved, the cause of functions that aren’t quite working as intended, or simply monitoring activity for compliance with government or industry policies. At its core, an audit simply logs events that are happening on the server instance or in a database and saves them out as audit files that can be reviewed after the fact. In general, the objective of Security, Compliance and Auditing is that “all data should remain secure”. There are many techniques and tools available to secure, protect and safeguard the data, but how do you know what’s right for your organization?

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Nisarg Upadhyay
PageVerify is Checksum

Enforce SQL database best practices using SQL Server Policy-Based Management

July 24, 2020 by

In this article, I am going to explain how we can enforce the SQL database best practices using Policy-Based Management. The policy-based management feature of SQL Server was introduced in SQL Server 2005. This feature was useful because it helps database administrators to define and enforce the database policies based on the organizations’ requirements.

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Jignesh Raiyani
List SQL jobs with status

Audit and Alert SQL Server Jobs Status Changes (Enabled or Disabled)

December 4, 2019 by

In this article, we will talk about how to track enabled or disabled SQL jobs in SQL Server using T-SQL. Users with the Sysadmin role have the default permissions to modify the information of any jobs in SQL Server. If a user is not in this role and wants access to this activity, then the user needs to be given the SQLAgentOperatorRole in the msdb database.

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Ranga Babu
Direct recursive triggers in SQL Server

Triggers in SQL Server

May 15, 2019 by

In this article, we will review triggers in SQL Server, different types of trigger events, trigger order and NOT FOR REPLICATION in triggers. A trigger is a database object that runs automatically when an event occurs. There are three different types of events.

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Ahmad Yaseen
SQL Server database auditing - ApexSQl Audit installation Wizard

Perform a SQL Server Audit using ApexSQL Audit

May 15, 2019 by

This is the last article, but not least, in the SQL Server Audit series. In this series (see TOC at the bottom), we explained deeply the concept of the SQL Server Audit, why it becomes mandatory for each company to have a SQL Server Audit solution to track and log the different types of events at both the SQL Server instance and database levels. We also went through and compare the different methods that can be used to audit the SQL Server instances and databases.

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Ahmad Yaseen
SQL Server audit - New Temporal Table Creation

Performing a SQL Server Audit using System-Versioned Temporal Tables

May 14, 2019 by

In previous articles of this SQL Server Audit series (see the TOC at the bottom), we discussed the main concept and real-life needs for having a SQL Server Audit solution. After that, we went through the different methods that can be used to audit the SQL Server instances and databases. In this article, we will show how to take advantages of the System-versioned Temporal Tables feature to audit database table DML changes.

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Ahmad Yaseen
SQL Server Audit Specification

Using the SQL Server Audit Feature to Audit Different Actions

April 22, 2019 by

In the previous article of the SQL Server Audit series, SQL Server Audit Feature Components, we discussed the three main components of the SQL Server Audit feature; the SQL Server Audit, the Server Audit Specifications, and the Database Audit Specifications in details. In this article, we will show how to use the SQL Server Audit feature to track, log and review the different operations performed at both the SQL Server and the database levels.

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Ahmad Yaseen
Create SQL Server Audit

SQL Server Audit Feature Components

April 15, 2019 by

In the previous articles of the SQL Server Audit series (see the TOC at the bottom), we discussed the concept of the SQL Server Audit, why we need an audit solution to track and log the different events performed in our SQL Server instances and databases, and went through the different methods that can be used to audit the SQL Server databases. In this article, we will discuss the SQL Server Audit feature components and how to configure it.

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Nikola Dimitrijevic

SQL Server trace flags guide; from -1 to 840

March 4, 2019 by

SQL Server trace flags are configuration handles that can be used to enable or disable a specific SQL Server characteristic or to change a specific SQL Server behavior. It is an advanced SQL Server mechanism that allows drilling down into a hidden and advanced SQL Server features to ensure more effective troubleshooting and debugging, advanced monitoring of SQL Server behavior and diagnosing of performance issues, or turning on and off various SQL Server features

Ahmad Yaseen

Auditing by Reading the SQL Server Transaction Log

February 25, 2019 by

In the previous articles of this series, we discussed the reasons behind auditing the different SQL Server instance and database events, how to audit the SQL Server instance manually and using the Extended Events and Triggers methods. In this article, we will show how to audit your SQL Server instance by reading the content of the SQL Transaction Log file of the user database.

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Ahmad Yaseen

Creating a SQL Server audit using SQL Server Extended Events and Triggers

February 13, 2019 by

This article will provide an overview of manually creating a SQL Server audit using SQL Server Extended events and triggers. It will provide an overview of SQL tracing/profiling as well as extended events. I’ll walk you through how to create a new extended events session and how to use it, in a worked example, to audit failed logins. Finally, we’ll touch on an auditing approach using triggers

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Ahmad Yaseen

Implementing a manual SQL Server Audit

January 25, 2019 by

A SQL Server audit can be performed using various number of methods. This includes using the built-in SQL Server Audit feature, using third party tools from the SQL Server market or simply perform the audit task using the legacy methods manually. In the previous article of this series, SQL Server audit overview, we discussed the main concept of a SQL Server audit, the importance of auditing the SQL Server instance changes and the SQL server audit checklists. In this article, we will go through the manual procedures for auditing the SQL Server instance.

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Ahmad Yaseen

SQL Server Audit Overview

January 9, 2019 by

To fill an optimal role in all business’s computerized operations, information technology systems and infrastructure should be guaranteed, well controlled, aligned with the business goals and secured. Technology auditing ensures the evaluation and examination of these business requirements on an organization.

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SQLShack

SQL Server database auditing tools

September 17, 2018 by

This collection of content presents an overview of top SQL Server database auditing tools, with product page links for each of the tools and screenshots if available. If you noticed a tool we missed, please let us know in the comments below.

All database auditing tools are sorted by alphabetical order.

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