You need to make sure that nobody tampers with your production databases, or really any databases outside Development. Even if you weren't of a nervous disposition, you'd want to know if a database was stopped or removed. You'd also be intrigued by the sudden unrehearsed addition of a database to a production server. Read more
Provides a PowerShell monitoring script for errors, warnings and critical events on the Windows server hosting your SQL Server instance, including the failed server login attempts that would accompany a brute-force password attack. Read more
If we know how a database is likely to be attacked, we can arrange our lines of defense, and install the monitors required to detect any attempts. However, some types of attack are difficult to imagine, so we also need our monitoring tool to be adaptable, so that it can collect a more diffuse collection of metrics, and then help us determine the reason for any sudden change in the patterns of access . Read more
Using a PowerShell script that collects log data from a web server, plus a SQL Monitor custom metric, Phil Factor offers a way to check for suspicious website errors and unusual patterns of activity, right alongside your database monitoring. Read more
If a table runs out of IDENTITY values then it, and any dependent services and applications, will be "read-only" until the problem is fixed. Steve Jones explains how to set up a custom monitor to detect and prevent such problems. Read more
Phil Factor offers a clever way to report on a SQL Server intrusion, with a query that shows a full narrative description of all the security-related changes that have been detected by a set of SQL Monitor custom metrics. Read more
The best way to learn how to protect your databases from SQL Injection is to to see it in action and confront its consequences. This article tells the story of an attack on a vulnerable SQL Server REST interface, explaining how the attack unfolds, the mistakes that made it possible, and SQL Monitor's role as the 'canary in the mine'. Read more
Phil Factor uses the default trace and a SQL Monitor custom metric to alert you to unauthorized changes in security membership or permissions in any of your monitored databases. Read more
Phil Factor uses Extended Events and a SQL Monitor custom metric to detect when the metadata of a database has 'drifted', meaning that a database object has been created, deleted or modified outside of the official change management process. Read more
Rodney Landrum describes how a monitoring tool must help us monitor, analyze and predict resource usage, including costs, across a growing and diversifying estate, and also help the organization to connect server resource usage and error conditions directly to their impact on business processes. Read more