Practical Database Auditing for Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL

Know how to track changes and key events in your SQL Server databases in support of application troubleshooting, regulatory compliance, and governance. This book shows how to use key features in SQL Server ,such as SQL Server Audit and Extended Events, to track schema changes, permission changes, and changes to your data. You’ll even learn how to track queries run against specific tables in a database.

Not all changes and events can be captured and tracked using SQL Server Audit and Extended Events, and the book goes beyond those features to also show what can be captured using common criteria compliance, change data capture, temporal tables, or querying the SQL Server log. You will learn how to audit just what you need to audit, and how to audit pretty much anything that happens on a SQL Server instance. This book will also help you set up cloud auditing with an emphasis on Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and AWS RDS SQL Server.

You don’t need expensive, third-party auditing tools to make auditing work for you, and to demonstrate and provide value back to your business. This book will help you set up an auditing solution that works for you and your needs. It shows how to collect the audit data that you need, centralize that data for easy reporting, and generate audit reports using built-in SQL Server functionality for use by your own team, developers, and organization’s auditors.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

* Understand why auditing is important for troubleshooting, compliance, and governance


* Track changes and key events using SQL Server Audit and Extended Events
* Track SQL Server configuration changes for governance and troubleshooting
* Utilize change data capture and temporal tables to track data changes in SQL Server tables
* Centralize auditing data from all your databases for easy querying and reporting
* Configure auditing on Azure SQL, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and AWS RDS SQL Server

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

Database administrators who need to know what’s changing on their database servers, and those who are making the changes; database-savvy DevOps engineers and developers who are charged with troubleshooting processes and applications; developers and administrators who are responsible for generating reports in support of regulatory compliance reporting and auditing

JOSEPHINE BUSH has more than 10 years of experience as a database administrator. Her experience is extensive and broad-based, including experience in financial, business, and energy data systems using SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL. She is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert: Data Management and Analytics. She holds a BS in Information Technology, an MBA in IT Management, and an MS in Data Analytics. She is the author of Learn SQL Database Programming. You can reach her on Twitter @hellosqlkitty.

Introduction

PART I. GETTING STARTED WITH AUDITING

Chapter 1. Why Auditing is Important

Chapter 2. Types of Auditing

PART II. IMPLEMENTING AUDITING

Chapter 3. What is SQL Server Audit?

Chapter 4. Implementing SQL Server Audit via the GUI

Chapter 5. Implementing SQL Server Audit via SQL Scripts

Chapter 6: What is Extended Events?

Chapter 7: Implementing Extended Events via the GUI

Chapter 8: Implementing Extended Events via SQL Scripts

Chapter 9. Tracking SQL Server Configuration Changes

Chapter 10. Additional SQL Server Auditing and Tracking Methods

PART III. CENTRALIZING AND REPORTING ON AUDITING DATA

Chapter 11. Centralizing Audit Data

Chapter 12. Create Reports from Audit Data

PART IV. CLOUD AUDITING OPTIONS

Chapter 13. Auditing Azure SQL Databases

Chapter 14. Auditing Azure SQL Managed Instance

Chapter 15. Other Cloud Provider Auditing Options

PART V. APPENDIXES

Appendix A. Database Auditing Options Comparison