Computer networks are designed to facilitate business. The consequence of business, beyond communication, is data. To ensure that sensitive information does not fall into the hands of unauthorized personnel, you must recognize and protect it from this threat.
Learn about database security from people who know how to attack your systems is the most effective way to learn. Taking a database security course could drive you far away from threats, but first, let us go through what database security exactly is?
What is Database security?
Because confidentiality is the aspect that is violated in the majority of data breaches, this essay will concentrate on it.
Database security must handle and safeguard the following:
- The database’s information
- The database management system (DBMS)
- Any applications that are related
- The actual and/or virtual database servers, as well as the underlying hardware
- The computer and/or network infrastructure that is used to connect to the database.
Database security is a difficult undertaking that involves every aspect of information security technologies and processes. It’s also incompatible with database usability. The database becomes more exposed to security risks as it becomes more accessible and useful; the database becomes more invulnerable to attacks as it becomes more difficult to access and use. (Anderson’s Rule is the name given to this contradiction) (link resides outside IBM)
Why is it important?
A data breach is defined as a failure to preserve the confidentiality of data in a database. The amount of damage a data breach causes your company is determined by several effects or factors:
Intellectual property that has been compromised: Your intellectual property—trade secrets, innovations, and private practice could be crucial to maintaining a competitive edge in your market. If your intellectual property is stolen or revealed, it may be difficult or impossible to retain or restore your competitive edge.
Customers or partners may be hesitant to acquire your products or services (or do business with your firm) if they don’t trust you to secure their or their data.
Business continuity: Some businesses will be unable to continue operating until the breach has been rectified.
Non-compliance might result in fines or penalties. Failure to comply with global regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SAO) or the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), industry-specific data privacy regulations like HIPAA, or regional data privacy regulations like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can have devastating financial consequences, with fines exceeding several million dollars in the worst cases.
Threats and difficulties that are commonly encountered
A breach can occur as a result of a variety of software misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, or habits of negligence or misuse. The following are some of the most prevalent forms of database security attacks, as well as the reasons for them.
Threats from within:
- A security danger from one of three sources having privileged access to the database is known as an insider threat.
- A nefarious insider with the intent to cause harm
- A sloppy insider who makes mistakes that expose the database to attack
An infiltrator is a third party who acquires credentials by phishing or obtaining access to the credential database directly.
Insider threats are one of the most prevalent causes of database security breaches, and they are frequently the result of granting privileged user access credentials to too many workers.
Errors made by humans:
Accidents, weak passwords, password sharing, and other careless or ignorant user actions continue to account for over half of all reported data breaches (49 percent).
Vulnerabilities in database software are being exploited:
Hackers make a career by identifying and exploiting flaws in many types of software, including database management software. To address these vulnerabilities, all major commercial database software manufacturers and open source database management platforms release frequent security updates, however, failing to deploy these fixes promptly might raise your risk.
Injection attacks on SQL/NoSQL databases:
The insertion of arbitrary SQL or non-SQL attack strings into database queries provided by web applications or HTTP headers is a database-specific vulnerability. These attacks are vulnerable to organizations that do not follow secure web application coding practices or do regular vulnerability testing.
Exploiting buffer overflows:
When a process tries to write more data to a fixed-length block of memory than it can retain, this is known as buffer overflow. Attackers might exploit the extra data, which is stored at neighboring memory addresses, as a starting point for their attacks.
Attacks that cause a denial of service (DoS/DDoS)
In a denial of service (DoS) attack, the attacker floods the target server in this example, the database server with so many requests that it can no longer fulfill genuine requests from real users, and the server becomes unstable or fails in many situations.
Malware
Malware is software designed to exploit database flaws or otherwise harm the database. Malware can enter the database’s network through any endpoint device.
Backups are being attacked
Backups can be exposed to assaults if organizations fail to safeguard backup data with the same strict controls that they employ to protect the database itself.
The following factors aggravate these dangers:
Growing data volumes
Data capture, storage, and processing continue to expand at an exponential rate across almost all companies. Any data security technologies or procedures must be highly scalable to fulfill both immediate and long-term demands.
Infrastructure sprawl
As organizations shift workloads to multi-cloud or hybrid cloud architectures, network environments are getting increasingly complicated, making the selection, deployment, and administration of security solutions more difficult.
Increasingly rigorous regulatory requirements
The global regulatory compliance landscape is becoming increasingly complicated, making it more difficult to comply with all regulations.
Cybersecurity skills shortage
Experts estimate that by 2022, there will be up to 8 million unfilled cybersecurity positions
Best Practices
Because databases are almost always network-accessible, any security threat to any component inside any section of the network infrastructure also poses a threat to the database, and any attack affecting a user’s device or workstation can also provide a threat to the database. As a result, database security must extend well beyond the database itself.
Conclusion
When you have gone through the whole article, you now know what database security is and why is it necessary for your company or business.
How important is your data to you? I can’t tell you enough how vital it is, now it’s your responsibility if you still don’t choose to take a course and lose your precious data