Risks of Direct Production Database Access

• A large percentage (figures vary from ~60% to over 75% dependant on source) of all data breaches start internally - in 2020 61% of companies had an insider attack in the past year (1) (Bitglass, 2020).

• A large number of data breaches are accidental (human error) rather than malicious. In 2020 62% of insider incidents were caused by negligent employees or contractors. Malicious insiders accounted for only 14% (1) (Panda Security, 2020).

• Poorly written queries impacting overall database performance.

Mitigation

• No shared accounts

• Auditing

• Least Privilege

How to Protect a Database

• Ensure your database configuration follows policy.

• Patch for known vulnerabilities

• Monitor for configuration drift

• Enforce least privilege

• Control privileged user access to data

• Enforce separation of duties

• Establish and enforce a trusted path to data

• Encrypt data in motion and at rest

• Protect against network sniffing attacks

• Protect against data scraping attacks (.e.g ransomware)

• Use native auditing capabilities to capture high-value activity

• Use network-based monitoring to examine ALL activity

Bibliography