Database Auditing

Database administrators may not have experience with the security and regulatory compliance implications of their day-to-day activities. There is a growing need for real-time data protection to meet regulatory compliance requirements and mitigate risk against various types of threats to enterprise databases. Because hackers will always find new ways to breach security, enterprises must keep abreast of the latest security technologies including real-time protection. It takes a hacker less than 20 seconds to execute a query and retrieve confidential data once an application or database is broken into. Because it is not humanly possible to detect such attacks, the need for real-time database protection has become a critical requirement, and adoption will further grow as enterprises look to automate their auditing and real-time protection environments.

Although many legislative mandates do not explicitly spell out data security options, database auditing is always viewed as a best practice that should be employed for enterprises’ critical databases. Some compliance requirements like PCI Data Security put special emphasis on cardholder data, requiring a complete audit trail not only of which data was changed and by whom, but also of who accessed the data.

In many enterprises, databases manage hundreds and thousands of data access requests per minute. It is next to impossible to manually detect suspicious activities and block services in real time.

Internal and external auditors are now requiring complete nail down of all private data in applications and databases. Forrester estimates that in most industries fewer than 15% of enterprise databases contain private data, but in some (like financial services) the figure can be as high as 80%.

Any breach of security can have a potentially huge impact on a business in the form of fines, lawsuits, effect on stock prices, and revenue loss. Although advanced database security measures do not guarantee freedom from attacks, they can minimize risks.