Creating a Database Security Culture
There has been an increasing concern to database security; this is because several reports made of loss or damage of sensitive data due to access by unauthorized persons. There has been an increased amount of data gathered, stored, and exchanged via electronic systems, which calls for a need for understanding database security. Additionally, several times companies, as well as individuals, tend to overlook the aspect of securing a database but prioritize the webserver. They forget that most of the organizations’ information is stored in these databases and, if not protected, could cause several damages to the firm. Also, a sustainable database security culture is necessary since most of the database information access entry points are availed to the organization employees and business partners. Additionally, when a company stores all its data in a central database, even with encryption, there will always be system vulnerabilities hence security risks. Databases, therefore, tend to experience most attacks and should have the highest security measures in place. Attackers are continuously coming up with new means of gaining access to information, a more reason for a consistent security culture. Maintaining a database security culture is of the essence for any company, organization, or institution that deals with databases, whether huge or small. To develop this culture, organizations must ensure that everyone within the organization has an understanding of issues related to database security. In addition to understanding security issues, they should be involved in database security practices that will also enable them to be in a position to identify possible solutions to security problems.
Strategies for Creating a Sustainable Database Security Culture
There are several strategies that firms can employ to maintain a database security culture in their organizations. Database security revolves around aspects of availability, confidentiality, and integrity. Availability is ensuring that authorized users are not denied access to the system as a result of hardware and software errors or vicious access to data. Confidentiality ensures that private information is protected against disclosure to unauthorized individuals. And integrity, which assures that data is protected against illegal modification and that they are modified in an authorized way. From the three aspects, database security, therefore, covers areas like access control, mechanisms for auditing, application access.
The most important aspect of maintaining a database security culture in an organization is by creating awareness as well as training the workers. Employees should know the potential threats they can face and the conditions that make them vulnerable to such attacks. The areas in which employees should be educated are like the use of strong passwords, anti-viruses, and system backup. Organizations need to encourage their employees to develop a habit of creating strong passwords for their systems as a means of user authentication. Strong passwords prevent intruders from obtaining access to computer systems since it makes them take a lot of time breaking into. They should know the components of the right password, such as a combination of numbers, lower and upper cases as well as special characters. Secondly, several anti-virus software exists to provide additional security. Employees should always be advised to make use of legitimate copies of these software programs to scan, detect, and get rid of malicious programs like worms, viruses, and Trojan horses. Lastly, companies should remind workers always to consider backing up their system using secondary storage devices like hard disks for protection against theft or damage of information.
Another way organizations can ensure a database security culture is maintained by using an access control approach. This method is used to limit access to an organization’s data to specific users. Access control is usually achieved by assigning rights and privileges to individual users or objects to using certain resources. A database includes objects like tables, rows, columns, and views to limit access to such, the grant or revokes access technique is often used. When controlling access, users can be assigned privileges according to their specialty, role as well as the job group. The organization should, therefore, ensure they assess user, their roles, and their data access needs to build proper database security protocols.
In maintaining a security culture, organizations should always perform system audits for tracking access to databases, user activities, and database errors. System audits are essential in identifying the users who gained access to particular database objects, the actions carried out, and modifications made. Database auditing is usually achieved using log files and audit tables. However, auditing does not necessarily prevent security bypass; it provides a means for detection of any possible occurrence of a security breach. Various mechanisms for performing database audits includes monitoring and identifying any attempts of accessing a database, second is data manipulation activities, and activities of data control and definition languages. To monitor access attempts, details concerning successful and unsuccessful logins are kept. Audits on data control language keep records of changes in role and user additions, privileges, and deletions. Those concerning data definition language keeps track of database structure changes such as tables or data types of attributes. Data manipulation language audits monitor changes explicitly in the data.
Companies should perform continuous assessments and testing of database applications before they are deployed. This testing aims to identify the weaknesses of a database system or the website used for deployment. Most of the databases that are available over the internet are usually vulnerable to SQL injection, and the possible solutions to these are testing the security of an application and implementing the use of firewalls.
Finally, besides the technical side of maintaining a database security culture, the most crucial part of this is how humans conduct themselves concerning it. The values and knowledge the employees have will influence how they react to matters concerning database security. Organizations should engage employees such that they can report any incidences of security breach noticed. They should also be made aware of certain practices or behaviors that can make a system vulnerable to attacks such as using a Wi-Fi network that is not secure, such practices may appear to cause no harm but could be disastrous. To encourage such practices, organizations should not tolerate poor security behavior after employees are trained and should commend good security practices.
Conclusion
Creating and maintaining a sustainable security culture in an organization is a very significant consideration. This is due to several issues available about database security like storage of data in central databases and many entry points available to employees and business partners. Different practices that should be considered by these firms to create such a culture includes creating database security awareness among the employees and training them on good practices of computer security—implementing access control mechanisms, performing database system audits, and a continuous assessment and testing of databases and websites.