Protecting Azure SQL against vulnerabilities
A holistic security strategy should not only include preventing successful attacks, but should also include detecting ongoing threats that may have bypassed existing defenses. There are two sides to implementing this for our SQL databases. The starting point is to enable Azure SQL database auditing to record database operations. The other side is to implement Azure Defender for SQL to analyze the logs and stay alert for suspicious events.
Enabling Azure SQL database auditing
Azure SQL auditing is a feature that can be used to record database events to an audit log in an Azure Storage account, Log Analytics workspace, or event hub. The main use case of this feature is to record database operations for further analysis. Another use case is for compliance purposes.
This feature is not enabled by default. Using the Azure portal, we can enable it at the server or database level from the Security section (Figure 11.33). Enabling it at...
