Database Security Issues and how to fix them

Data security is the major concern of organizations around the world, and in the current digital era, it’s much more complicated to handle database security measures. Check out some major pointers on database security administration and tips on fixing these vulnerabilities.

Hackers these days, primarily target databases – as these potentially contain valuable information, which can be misused. This kind of data may range from personal demographics to financial data or corporate intellectual property data etc. There are several recent incidents in which hackers have targeted companies dealing with personal user details. Global brands like Facebook, Equifax, Google, Apple, Yahoo, Slack, and eBay are all on trial for data breaches over the last few years.

Database Security Issues

• Lack of Security Testing Before Database Deployment: An important factor that weakens the database is the negligence of the administrators while planning and deploying databases. Even though they do functional testing to ensure optimized performance, this testing cannot ensure if the database is prone to any adverse data practices.

Fix: Conduct website security testing using appropriate testing methodologies before deployment.

• Data Breaches + Poor Encryption: If your security measures are poor, there are various network interfaces on the databases that can be tracked by hackers.

Fix: Avoid such incidents by using SSL or TLS encryptions on communication platforms.

• Non-Secure Database Backups: There are several cases where organizations struggle with internal threats, the same as that of external. Employees with access to the critical business data may steal the data or use it improperly to end up in data loss.

Fix: Encrypting the database archives and implement strong security standards, apply penalties in case of best practices violations, usage of top-end cybersecurity software, etc

• Weak and Complex Database Infrastructure: Hackers typically don’t take control of the databases in one go. They find out the weakest points in the database infrastructure and then leverage these. Security software sometimes doesn’t completely protect your systems from such malicious manipulations.

Fix: It’s essential not to make the database infrastructure too complex. If it is made complex, then it is possible that the implementers may forget the track or tend to neglect the need to check and fix the weaknesses.

• Unrestricted Administrative Access: Proper division of tasks between the database administrators and the individual users will help ensure limited access to individuals. Following this pattern will help organizations to limit individual access to limited and only needed data sources and thereby reduce the risks of data loss.

Few more data security vulnerabilities to check are – website security for any SQL injections, inadequate practices in key data management, database irregularities, excessive data permissions, missing patches, poorly configured logs, and audits, etc. Data breaches and theft can be prevented to a large extent – when companies keep a close watch and appropriate measures.