Securing SQL Server is a crucial task, as SQL Server usually holds very important and sensitive information in your environment. You need to apply many principles in order to properly secure your databases. Fortunately, SQL Server offers you many options in order to help you with securing your data stored on the SQL Server. Securing a SQL Server is quite a complex task; you need to consider that SQL Server is a client application running on the Windows server, which is accessible via a network. In order to fully secure the environment, you need to secure the Windows OS too and put proper security measures on the network as well.
In this chapter, we will be covering the following topics:
- SQL Server service accounts
- Authentication and authorization
- Encrypting SQL Server data
