“Combining People and Technology for Enhanced Pharmacy Services”
• 8 years experience with SQL Server
• 3 were spent as Senior DBA and Database Security “Expert” for The Defense
Information Systems Agency, a Department of Defense Agency
• Database Manager and Security Manager for the leader in independent
retail pharmacy services
• Independent Contractor for SolidQ
• Hold several Security and Microsoft Certifications
• Vice President of OKCSQL User Group
• Chairman for SQL Saturday Oklahoma City
TWITTER - @SQLCENTURION, @OKCSQL, @SQLSATOKC
WEBSITE - SQLCENTURION.COM
The Obligatory “About Me“ Page
“Combining People and Technology for Enhanced Pharmacy Services”
Does Anybody Actually Read These Things?
“Combining People and Technology for Enhanced Pharmacy Services”
INFORMATION SECURITY
• First the boring stuff
“Combining People and Technology for Enhanced Pharmacy Services”
INFORMATION SECURITY
• What does it mean?
• Title 44 of the United States Code defines
Information Security as protecting information
and information systems from unauthorized
access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification,
perusal, inspection, recording or destruction.
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INFORMATION SECURITY
• What are the 3 information assurance
attributes?
• Confidentiality
• Integrity
• Availability
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PRINCIPAL OF LEAST PRIVILEGE
• Pretty much the first line of defense for all
facets of information security
• Can be nearly impossible to enforce,
depending on granularity
• If it doesn’t exist, it can’t be exploited
“Combining People and Technology for Enhanced Pharmacy Services”
IA ATTRIBUTES (1) - CONFIDENTIALITY
• What does confidentiality mean?
• Privacy or the ability to control or restrict access
so that only authorized individuals can view
sensitive information. One of the underlying
principles of confidentiality is "Need-to-know" or
"Least Privilege". In effect, access to vital
information should be limited only to those
individuals who have a specific need to see or use
that information.
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IA ATTRIBUTES (1) - CONFIDENTIALITY
• What does confidentiality mean to us?
• Ensuring only those who are authorized can
see what they are supposed to and nothing
more.
• What are the most common methods?
• Encryption
• Authentication
• Access Control
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IA ATTRIBUTES (1) - CONFIDENTIALITY
Types Of Encryption
• Symmetric Key – Shared key
• Asymmetric Key – Public/Private-key
infrastructure (PKI)
• Certificate – Issued by a certificate authority (can
be SQL server generated), it can be either
Symmetric or Asymmetric depending on issuer,
but it does have an expiration date!
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IA ATTRIBUTES (1) - CONFIDENTIALITY
• What are the various types of encryption
offered by SQL?
Column Level
•
•
•
•
Encryptbypassphrase
Encryptbykey
Encryptbyasymkey
Encryptbycert
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IA ATTRIBUTES (1) - CONFIDENTIALITY
• What are the various types of encryption
offered by SQL?
Database Level
•
•
•
•
Transparent Database Encryption (TDE)
Requires a key
Encrypts data files on disk
Encrypts backups (you will lose a significant
amount of your backup compression)
• Not encrypted in memory!
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IA ATTRIBUTES (1) - CONFIDENTIALITY
• What are the various types of encryption
offered by SQL?
Instance Level
• Force Encryption – This encrypts ALL traffic to
and from SQL server
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IA ATTRIBUTES (1) - CONFIDENTIALITY
• What are the various types of encryption
offered by SQL?
Instance Level
• Force Encryption – This encrypts ALL traffic to
and from SQL server.
• The traffic is not sniff-able. This is great for
safeguarding sensitive information over the
wire but makes it much harder to detect SQL
injection attacks.
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IA ATTRIBUTES (1) - CONFIDENTIALITY
Authentication
• Best practice to use windows
authentication only
• Rename and disable SA (as well as
Windows /domain administrator accounts)
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IA ATTRIBUTES (1) - CONFIDENTIALITY
Access Control
• Using GPO or PBM to restrict access times
to logins that should never be doing
anything after hours.
• Properly testing permissions.
• Proper permissions to data file and backup
directories.
• Separating user accounts.
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IA ATTRIBUTES (2) - INTEGRITY
Data Integrity
• Information is accurate and reliable and has not
been subtly changed or tampered with by an
unauthorized party.
• Authenticity: The ability to verify content has not
changed in an unauthorized manner.
• Non-repudiation & Accountability: The origin of
any action on the system can be verified and
associated with a user.
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IA ATTRIBUTES (2) - INTEGRITY
Most Common Forms of Data Integrity
• Hashing/Checksums
• Source Control
• Locking
• Isolation Levels
• Data Modeling/Data Types
• Constraints
• Following auditing requirements set forth by your
industry standard (HIPAA/HITECH, PCI, STIG,
Sarbanes-Oxley, etc.)
• BACKUPS!!!
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IA ATTRIBUTES (2) - INTEGRITY
Hashing/Checksums
• Page_Verify - ALWAYS set to Checksum (SQL 2005 +)
• When CHECKSUM is enabled for the PAGE_VERIFY database
option, the SQL Server Database Engine calculates a
checksum over the contents of the whole page, and stores
the value in the page header when a page is written to disk.
When the page is read from disk, the checksum is
recomputed and compared to the checksum value that is
stored in the page header. This helps provide a high level of
data-file integrity.
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IA ATTRIBUTES (2) - INTEGRITY
Hashing/Checksums
• Hashbytes
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IA ATTRIBUTES (2) - INTEGRITY
Data Modeling
• Restricting the type and length of data that can fit
into a field
• A number can be a character but a character can’t
be an integer.
• ANSI vs. Unicode – Varchar vs. Nvarchar
• Let the battle begin!
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IA ATTRIBUTES (2) - INTEGRITY
Keys/Constraints
• The key, the whole key and nothing but the
key, so help me Codd
• Forces data integrity across relationships
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IA ATTRIBUTES (2) - INTEGRITY
Backups
They say a DBA needs one of two things………
Either a really great backup/recovery solution
or a really great resume. Which do you have?
(Also falls into Availability)
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IA ATTRIBUTES (2) - INTEGRITY
Auditing
• Many different types of auditing depending on your industry
standard.
• C2 Audit Mode….. No…. Just, No! (unless there is a business
reason to do so and you have a metric ton of drive space).
• Have to know the 5 W’s - not just the application user name,
but the user as well.
• Lots of 3rd party tools out there or you can build your own
using sp_trace_create or logging to a table.
• As of SQL 2008 you can use Extended Events but in 2012+ it
is a lot friendlier to use.
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IA ATTRIBUTES (2) - INTEGRITY
Auditing
So You’ve Got Auditing, Now What?
• If you are using a 3rd party tool, make sure you’ve set your
sensitive columns and thoroughly examined everything that
requires reporting.
• Build your own reports using fn_trace_gettable to read the
trace file or by building alerting off of your trace table.
• Most standards require automatic notification and auditors
will want to see your auditing policy, procedure and
evidence of Implementation.
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IA ATTRIBUTES (2) - INTEGRITY
Auditing
What Happens If You Tell An Auditor I Don’t Know?
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IA ATTRIBUTES (3) - AVAILABILITY
What Does SQL Offer To Meet Availability?
• Failover Clustering/Geo Clustering
• Always On
• Database Mirroring
• Log Shipping
• Replication
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IA ATTRIBUTES (3) - AVAILABILITY
Failover Clustering
• Uses shared storage.
• Protects the data in the event of a
server/hardware failure.
• Can only run in an active/passive scenario which
can be expensive due to not being able to utilize
both servers.
• Only 1 set of permissions to maintain.
• Susceptible to network and SAN failures.
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IA ATTRIBUTES (3) - AVAILABILITY
Geo Clustering
• Allows for seamless Site2Site failover.
• One connection string to maintain/applications
unaware of failover.
• Can be extremely expensive to implement.
• Requires either SAN level replication or a 3rd party
utility to handle bit-level replication.
• 3rd party utilities can be used with local storage.
• Only 1 set of permissions to maintain.
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IA ATTRIBUTES (3) - AVAILABILITY
Always On (SQL 2012)
• Requires you to set up availability groups.
• Can use either 1 or multiple connection strings.
• Can leverage multiple servers at the same time/ offset reads
and writes on different servers (2 live copies and 2
standby’s).
• Servers can be anywhere in the world.
• Offload backup overhead to another server at another site.
• User DB’s only, so you will need to manage permissions for
each instance.
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IA ATTRIBUTES (3) - AVAILABILITY
Database Mirroring
• User DB’s only with 1 Mirror Max
• Synchronous/Asynchronous
• Can have automatic failover with a witness
• Depending on where the witness resides it can cause a false
positive for a failover.
• Requires you to apply any permissions changes to both
servers.
• Repairs torn pages and sends the changes back to the
Principal!!!! (Integrity)
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IA ATTRIBUTES (3) - AVAILABILITY
Log Shipping
• Can Use Multiple Servers(Not From SSMS)
• Only As Good As Your Last Log Backup
• Can Use Automatic Failover
• Can Be Used With Database Mirroring
• Requires The Use Of File Shares
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IA ATTRIBUTES (3) - AVAILABILITY
Replication
Snapshot/Merge/Transactional
• A “Picture” of the database at a certain point in time.
• Depending on the type of replication chosen, after the initial
snapshot is taken changes are applied to the subscribers
(merge/transactional).
• Read-only (snapshot).
• Can be applied to multiple servers.
• Great for reporting.
• Requires file sharing.
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INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
So what are some other simple
things that we can do to help
meet CIA, as well as shrink
our attack surface?
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INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
Change The Default Port That SQL Uses
• By default SQL uses port 1433.
• What is network enumeration/fingerprinting?
(NMAP, Metasploit, Etc.)
• Depends on network security theory, DMZ or
enclave.
Revoke Connect From Guest
• Any user with database permission can see any
other database!
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INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
Revoke Connect From Guest
• Any user with database permission can see any
other database!
Disable XP_CMDSHELL
Disable Unneeded Protocols
• You don’t need all of the protocols enabled (VIA,
TCP/IP, shared memory and named pipes)(highly
recommend turning off named pipes!)
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INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
Enable Common Criteria Compliance
• Enabled as of SQL 2005 SP2 and standard as of
SQL 2008.
• Residual information protection, which overwrites
memory with a bit pattern before it is reallocated
to a new resource.
• The ability to view login statistics.
(sys.dm_exec_sessions)
• A column-level GRANT does not override tablelevel DENY.
“Combining People and Technology for Enhanced Pharmacy Services”
INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
Disable SQL Browser
• SQL Browser tells on you and any instances you are running.
• Not possible with named instances/clusters.
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INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
Hide Instance
• Will not respond to enumeration requests but will still
respond to telnet requests.
• Will not show up in “Browse For More”.
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INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
Minimal Service Install
• I’ll use it eventually, right?
• Principal of Least Privilege
• 1st step in minimizing your attack surface
• No BIDS on production
• Separate Dev from Prod
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INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
Baselines
• Baselines? We don’t need no stinking Baselines!
• Baseline Analyzer
• Know who your SysAdmin’s are
• SQL Permissions/Users
• Databases
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INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
No DMZ, IIS Or DC’S
• If at all possible, do not install SQL on the same
box as IIS.
• Don’t install SQL on a domain controller(SQL will
not let you install on a domain controller but an
SQL Server can become a domain controller).
• Depending on your security theory and setup,
don’t install SQL on a DMZ.
• Unless your webserver is also on the DMZ.
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INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
DEV/TEST DATA
• Protect it just like you would production data and then
some!
• Attackers would compromise a test environment before a
prod environment, why?
• Most attackers don’t want you to know they are there.
• Mask sensitive production data.
• Your developers don’t need credit card info, social security
numbers, etc.
• I use MSSQL.DataMask (not a paid endorsement).
http://www.wintestgear.com/products/MSSQLDataMask/MSSQLDataMask.html
“Combining People and Technology for Enhanced Pharmacy Services”
INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
What Did We Learn?
• Basic security comes down to a few simple things.
• Don’t be predictable.
• Stay away from defaults.
• Don’t offer up your information to the world.
• Protect dev/test data just as you would prod.
• Keep an eye on users and permissions.
• BE VIGILANT!
“Combining People and Technology for Enhanced Pharmacy Services”
INFORMATION SECURITY – BEST PRACTICES
“Combining People and Technology for Enhanced Pharmacy Services”