Businesses today rely heavily on data, and it has become the lifeblood of any organization. If a company wants to grow and prosper, it will need to make proper use of data to improve itself continually. The sheer importance of data also makes it vulnerable. Data theft has become a modern day menace that plagues companies all over the world. A leak or breach of sensitive data can land a company in legal trouble, damage its reputation and even lead to massive financial losses.
Because of this growing importance of data, much emphasis is given to maintaining a robust database. Businesses that deal with large amounts of data need to have a proper database management strategy in place.For this, they need the help and expertise of database consultants.
The Role Of Database Consultants
A database consultant has many responsibilities, one of which is ensuring the security of their client’s database systems. Security is, in fact, one of their primary concerns. The reason is that the massive damages (both financial and otherwise) that a breach in security can cause are all too easily documented in the press today. From hackers and disgruntled employees to even competitors, business data faces a threat from all sources. Because of this, a database must be secured enough to keep attackers away. Here, we are going to discuss some of the best practices that a database consulting company could inculcate to strengthen the security of a database system.
Use Secure Passwords: This is true for individual users but more so for a large enterprise. It should be elementary enough not to feature on a best practices list, but the number of disasters that have happened because of comprised passwords is so high that this one is worth a mention.
Limit User Access: A company needs to be clear about the actual purpose of providing access to a particular employee. A database consultant should not go through the hierarchy and allocate access to all senior executives.
Check Transaction Logs: Every database records operations in its transaction log file and a vigilant database consulting firm would make periodic queries of this log to find out the level of activity in the database.
Do Not Ignore Unsuccessful Logins: Any database management system would have the option of running audits of both successful and unsuccessful logins. Many login failures are merely due to a weak memory, but if there is something else going on, this audit can forewarn you.
Have A Backup Plan In Place: Even after all the above precautions, your data might still get hacked into and destroyed. That is why it is always a good idea to have a backup plan in place. That is called DR (disaster recovery) and BCP (business continuity plan).
All the above points are elementary and easy to implement suggestions to keep any database system secure. These are the fundamental pillars of a robust security system, and apart from these, there are very sophisticated firewalls and security features as well.
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