What is Database Access Management

Database Access Management (DAM) is an essential combination of policies, processes, and technology focused on governing, monitoring, and securing all interactions with an organization’s databases. Think of it as the best bouncer and bouncer's logbook for your digital's most valuable assets - your data. DAM is authoritative about who can access what data, when they can access the data, where they can access it, and what they can do with the data (read, write, modify, delete).

In today’s data-centric environment, databases are the life source of nearly all organizations, containing everything from sensitive customer data, financial data, intellectual property, and operational insights. Simply put, without the proper DAM, the family heirloom is exposed - this data is exposed to theft, or worse, misuse of data leading to compliance failures. DAM ensures only appropriately authorized user(s) and/or application(s) can interact with the database and every interaction is traceable and auditable - so it is a valuable protection checklist. It isn't about approval for work access, approval for changing access, but about maintaining proper security to eliminate the potential for unapproved activity.

Why is Database Access Management Important?

There are several very good and compelling reasons why an organization cannot avoid proper DAM. It's essential for building a secure and deployable solution.

• Protecting Valuable Data: Databases are the bread and butter for data breaches and loss, which can and likely result in the loss of millions of records containing sensitive data - which will lead to loss of reputation, acting as the scapegoat for advertisement gain, actual bottleneck impacts, legal trouble, and money - which typically translates well into opportunity cost. The reality of your safety will consider your organization the value-aware first layer - see it, claim it, caution!

• Compliance and Avoiding Fines: Most of the new data privacy regulations today (GDPR, HIPAA, DPDPA, PCI DSS, SOX, FedRAMP, SOC 2) have rules and recommendations about providing value on personal and sensitive data. You need to manage, maintain and understand your data, putting competence with ramifications. You can protect the organization by having rules to follow, the options to accomplish them, and awareness of consequences, paying for data protection.

• Maintaining data integrity and availability: Unauthorized or erroneous access could corrupt, alter, or delete data that would disrupt or disable business functions or the decision-making process. Proper Database Access Management (DAM) can allow you to guarantee that the data you have is accurate, reliable, and available to you when you need it.

• Reducing insider threats: In the media, external attacks are frequently the focus, but insider threats (malicious or accidental) remain an extreme risk. DAM limits what even legitimate users can do to avoid any potential abuse of privileges.

• Enabling auditing and forensics: If you were to encounter a security incident or an audit situation, DAM provides detailed logs of all database activity. In these situations, these logs become tremendously valuable in understanding what transpired, the source of the activity, and demonstrating compliance.

• Supporting cloud and hybrid environments: As business data migrates to cloud resources (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), and employs hybrid environments, access management becomes increasingly difficult to control. DAM extends the security controls across multi-dimensional mixed computing environments.

Key Components & Benefits of Database Access Management:

To be effective, a forward-thinking DAM strategy must consist of multiple layers of control:

Authentication:

• Who are you? The objective is to ensure the identity of the user or application, and demonstrate to the database the identity it uses to grant access.

• Authentication may be done through various mechanisms, such as usernames/password (not recommended), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), biometric authentication, or working with enterprise identity providers like Active Directory or Okta.

Authorization:

• What are you allowed to do? The problem is that once you successfully authenticate, authorization determines what explicit permissions an authenticated actor/entity has on specific database objects (think tables, columns, stored procedures) - essentially what actions you can do on particular database objects (read, write, update, delete).

• This point is also where "fine-grained access" settings can determine access options based on arbitrary context-specific, attribute, and policy-based considerations as opposed to specific roles.

Auditing and Monitoring:

• What did you do? That means monitoring and recording all activities related to databases, including all access attempts, whether successful or unsuccessful, and executed queries plus any changes to the data.

• Monitoring Access, including locking down database access, uses real-time monitoring to help catch any possible suspicious activity. The real-time monitoring is only part of the benefit to users; locking down access to privileged or admin database activity also provides a historical log for compliance reporting and forensic investigations if needed. Knowing who accessed what data and when provides accountability.

Least Privilege Access (LPA):

• The first principle in security is to allow only the lowest level privilege to perform their task, nothing more. DAM is capable of enforcing Least Privilege Access by removing static access privileges to a database and implementing Just-in-Time (JIT) Access to the database without administrative credential access.

Privileged Access Management (PAM):

• PAM's focus is managing, monitoring, and securing privileged accounts like database administration, root level accounts, etc. Privileged accounts generally have very high levels of privilege to carry out the instances' function, making them prime targets. PAM solutions allow for credential vaulting of these credentials securely, session capturing and recording for auditable evidence, and granular control on behalf of privileged access providers.

Dynamic and Context Aware Access:

• Access is not stagnant; it can dynamically always adapt to reflect context, for example, how much data warrants access to the cloud, and the performance/posture of the device, location (or Time-Based Access), and sensitivity of data requested. Dynamic access is continuous with the paradigm of security using a Zero Trust security model.

Data Masking and Redaction:

• Even if the information they are allowed to see is in appropriate fields, it may or may not be masked or redacted (i.e., the last four digits of a credit card) to eliminate unnecessary exposure, for example, that may occur in non-prod environments or when a role-assigned user has access, etc.

Unique Considerations for Database Access Management:

Implementing strong DAM has merit, but there are unique barriers to be aware of:

• Complexity: Regardless of whether you are a large organization, the types of databases to benefit limits are potentially vast. There are potentially every type of databases, whether relational, NoSQL, data warehousing methods, and you must remember their on-premises nature or cloud nature, each with unique access mechanisms.

• Manual processes: The manual provisioning and de-provisioning of users' access to databases is time-consuming, error-prone, and creates security blind spots with constantly changing environments.

• Orphan accounts and over-privileging: Every once in a while, end-users keep access even after projects end or roles change, and oftentimes they are given much more permissions than needed; having abundant orphan accounts and the risk of over-privileging creates an unwanted attack surface.

• Visibility gaps: It is difficult to enforce policies or determine when users’ behaviors are anomalous without centralized visibility of what each user has access to for every database.

• Shadow IT: The use of unsanctioned databases or unofficial applications creates access points that are unmanaged.

• Scalability: One can imagine the operational challenge of managing access for thousands of users and applications across hundreds of databases.

Best Practices for Effective Database Access Management

To take a proactive approach to access management challenges and protect your data, you should consider the following best practices:

• Adopt a Centralized DAM solution: By adopting a dedicated centralized Database Access Management (DAM) solution, you can manage access across many different database types and environments.

• Apply True Least Privilege, Just-in-Time: Only give the minimum required access for the minimum period of time. The goal is to be functional with automated approval for elevated access, and de-provisioning temporary access once the time is up.

• Leverage Stronger Authentication (Multifactor): Have users use multifactor passwords for all database access, but especially for privileged accounts.

• Automate the Access Lifecycle: Automate the provisioning, de-provisioning, and modifying of access rights on reboot based on role changes, project lifecycle, etc.

• Schedule Periodic Access Reviews and Certifications: Review and certify that all database access rights are still appropriate, and remove stale permissions at planned intervals.

• Continuous Monitoring and Alerting: Monitor all database behaviors in real-time, looking for behaviors that may indicate suspicious activity, while establishing alerts when anomalies exist.

• Access Security Controls for Privileged Account Management: Utilize a PAM solution to secure, monitor, and vault the credentials of very privileged database users.

• Use Data Masking/Redaction: Utilize techniques to mask sensitive data when full access is not needed.

• Zero Trust: Implicit trust does not exist. Every access request must be verified based on identity, device, context, and data sensitivity.

How ReShield can Help Secure Database Access

ReShield’s identity security platform has automation workflows purpose-built for the complexities of Database Access Management.

• Centralized Control: ReShield’s Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) and Identity and Access Management (IAM) components provide comprehensive centralized identity sources, and a management control plane, that provide a holistic organization-wide view of who has access to which database across a hybrid on-prem/cloud based database.

• Enforcement of Least Privilege and Just-in-Time Access: With ReShield’s Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Just-in-Time (JIT) Access functions, our platform allows users, including highly privileged Administrators and automated Machine User Identities, to achieve that exact level of permission needed, at the exact moment needed, with automatic revocation. This minimizes the attack surface significantly on your databases.

• Granular Access: ReShield's granular access policies allows organizations to precisely tailor access privileges based on user roles, attributes, data sensitivity outcome, and contextual factors which precisely permits database access down to specific database objects or fields.

• Continuous Monitoring and Audit Verifications: Our platform automatically generates immutable audit verifications, for every database access event generating what was accessed, by who and when, together with what device and from what location. This is what provides the organization itself with visibility for compliance reporting, forensics investigations, and finding suspicious behavior.

• Automated Access Lifecycle Management: ReShield promotes the automation of provisioned and de-provisioned authorized access activated/confirmed by user roles, and lifecycle events; which reduces the potential for human error and assures timely removal of access privileges.

• Support for Regulatory Compliance: By deploying only required high levels of access, while requiring detailed audit reports, ReShield ensures organizations have the capability to meet strict compliance requirements for regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, DPDPA, PCI DSS, SOX, FedRAMP, SOC 2, and many more; thus protecting the organization and avoiding penalties or administrative actions.

Overall, ReShield allows organizations to reimagine Database Access Management from a tactical problem to a strategic advantage while building trust, compliance, and protecting the organization's most sensitive and valuable digital assets.