What is database security?
Database security is the process of identifying, assessing, and mitigating security risks that can compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. As enterprises accumulate more data, this critical asset has become the backbone of business, powering business decisions, helping identify user behavior—and attracting bad actors.
Hackers are increasingly targeting databases through vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and social engineering. Database security addresses these threats through a comprehensive strategy that goes beyond setting passwords or installing firewalls.
Below, you'll explore modern database security best practices and learn about database hardening techniques. By the end of this guide, you'll be able to take actionable steps to improve the reliability, security, and compliance-readiness of critical database management systems.
Cloud Data Security Snapshot: Current Exposure Trends
This report offers data-backed insights and practical steps to help cloud and security teams close gaps, strengthen posture, and build resilient environments.
The importance of database security in today's threat landscape
Threat actors view databases as high-value targets and actively seek misconfigurations and default exposures. Despite this common threat, many organizations still struggle to properly secure their database environments, as evidenced by a 2025 Wiz report. It found that 72% of cloud environments have publicly accessible PaaS databases that lack proper access controls. This configuration dramatically increases the risk of cyberattacks on databases and regulatory noncompliance.
Attackers also routinely exploit critical database vulnerabilities that allow remote system compromise, credential theft, and data exfiltration. Moreover, hackers don't necessarily need to exploit your database software. They’re increasingly leveraging flaws in database management tools or ad-hoc applications.
For example, a vulnerability (CVE-2025-24787) in WhoDB, an open-source database management tool, allows parameter injection in connection strings. This flaw enables unauthenticated database users to read any file on the host machine by simply manipulating the connection URI. Such an attack highlights the power of exploiting database management tools instead of the databases themselves, giving attackers access to sensitive configurations, credentials, and underlying systems, and leading to deeper breaches and data theft.
Today, attackers don't need sophisticated zero-day vulnerabilities to compromise valuable data—widespread misconfigurations and flaws in adjacent tools provide ample opportunities. These risks highlight why traditional perimeter-based defenses aren’t enough. Without proactive database security measures to address these risks, organizations expose themselves to compromised sensitive data, regulatory fines, and costly security breaches.
Architectural patterns: Security considerations for on-premises vs. cloud databases
Organizations can deploy databases on-premise by hosting and managing their database software in a company data center, or they can leverage cloud database solutions to align with growing cloud adoption trends.
Here are some security considerations you’ll need to factor in for each scenario:
On-premises databases
On-premises databases offer complete control over the database software, environment, and underlying hardware. This control, however, comes with significant responsibilities in the following areas:
Database security: Implement and maintain all layers of security, including network segmentation, operating system hardening, and security updates using in-house engineering resources.
Physical security: Maintain secure access to data centers to prevent unauthorized physical access and hardware theft.
Scaling and monitoring: Manually scale instances to keep up with demand and monitor logs for anomaly detection.
Vulnerability management: Protect against database attacks by identifying vulnerabilities and promptly applying necessary software updates.
Access controls: Enforce identity and access management (IAM) to prevent weak authentication or public exposure of sensitive information.
Cloud databases
Cloud providers simplify database deployment and offer robust management, monitoring, and scaling features. They’re also responsible for securing the underlying infrastructure, including physical security, networking, and hypervisor-level security controls. However, companies are responsible for user access management, data encryption, network security policies, and compliance requirements.
This shared responsibility model divides the responsibility of managing security and operations between cloud providers and companies. In this scenario, database teams manage the following:
Database configurations: Set appropriate database controls to prevent data exposure and protect against database attacks.
Scaling and monitoring: Manage database scaling policies to meet business goals and review monitoring and alert triggers beyond default settings.
Access controls: Leverage the cloud provider's IAM features to implement secure access and consolidate log trails.
Encryption: Encrypt database keys to prevent database security threats like exfiltration and ransomware attacks.
Compliance and regulatory considerations
Actively protecting your databases to meet compliance and regulatory requirements is essential for maintaining users' trust. Frameworks such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) set the rules for how organizations must protect and manage database information.
For example, the PCI DSS mandates security requirements for companies that process, store, or transmit credit card information. Database security is a critical component of PCI DSS that requires protecting cardholder data through encryption, access control measures, and regular monitoring to prevent unauthorized user access and data breaches.
Failure to comply with these regulations can lead to substantial fines—but adherence isn’t always easy. Tracking these controls manually across cloud and hybrid environments is nearly impossible without automation, considering the volume of regulations and the intricacies of modern cloud environments. While many standards overlap, automation and tooling are essential for managing both common and unique compliance controls.
To assess your data security posture against compliance frameworks, you can use popular tools like Wiz DSPM.
Database security best practices: A layered approach
Sophisticated attacks rarely exploit just one weakness. Instead, they move laterally, chaining together vulnerabilities across the network, host, and data layers.
Because of this, relying on a single line of defense is insufficient. Organizations need a layered approach that mitigates risks through multiple overlapping security measures. This in-depth defense strategy is crucial for preventing, detecting, and responding to modern database threats.
Here are some key best practices that form the foundation of modern database security:
Database hardening
Database hardening involves securing databases at the host and data layers by implementing various security best practices. These include turning off unused features, services, and default user accounts, updating to the latest secure versions, and enforcing strong authentication protocols. Common database hardening practices include the following:
Prioritizing physical security: Isolate database servers from the public and control physical access to prevent theft or tampering at the hardware level.
Configuring firewalls: Implement firewall rules to restrict direct access to the database engine.
Securing core components: Harden all supporting web applications and workloads, and patch all systems to cut off attack paths to the database.
Managing protected data: Enforce strict policies for handling and storing protected data, like personally identifiable information, to prevent security breaches.
Implementing backup and disaster recovery: Establish automated backups and regularly test recovery processes to ensure quick restoration and minimal data loss.
Enforcing change management: Require formal review and approval for all changes to the database environment, including schema updates or user access modifications.
For in-depth, platform-specific hardening policies, refer to your database vendor's security manuals, like the Redis Security Guide and the MySQL Security Guide. These guides provide detailed, actionable steps for securing each database platform.
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Comprehensive data encryption
Encrypting all sensitive data mitigates risk at both the data and network layers. You should employ strong cryptographic algorithms, such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), to encrypt all sensitive data. PCI DSS recommends a key strength of at least 128 bits for all regulated data. Plus, it's best practice to never store sensitive authentication data after a completed transaction, even if it was encrypted.
Effective lifecycle management is also essential for ensuring that encryption keys are available only to authorized users. You can securely generate, store, distribute, rotate, and destroy cryptographic keys following NIST recommendations on key management policies. It's equally important to encrypt data in transit using secure protocols like TLS 1.2 or higher. This practice not only protects against interception but is also a common regulatory compliance requirement.
By combining strong encryption protocols with rigorous key management processes, you can secure data both at rest (in the data layer) and in transit (on the network layer), significantly reducing the likelihood that attackers will use stolen keys to gain data access.
Advanced threat protection
As threat actors become increasingly sophisticated, organizations need to move beyond standard database protection and adopt advanced threat protection capabilities to keep sensitive data safe. Advanced threat protection tools like Wiz DSPM give teams a deeper understanding of their cloud data by analyzing behavior and resource relationships.
By actively monitoring database activity and deploying threat detection tools, your team can uncover coordinated exploit attempts, SQL injection attacks, privilege escalations, or previously unknown attack patterns. You can also integrate these threat detection tools with SIEM platforms to get real-time attack alerts.
These advanced security solutions cover your database security across the host, network, and data layers so you can detect, investigate, and contain data sprawls before they escalate into sensitive data loss or widespread compromise.
Administrative and network access controls
Effective administration and network controls are crucial for maintaining secure databases. In addition to standard database hardening practices—like isolating database servers and implementing firewall rules—managing administration and networking with access control methods is crucial for end-to-end database security. Here are a few key practices:
Implementing network segmentation and isolation: Apply network segmentation to separate database management systems from the public-facing internet to tighten security and control data access.
Controlling access with network devices: Use database firewalls and router configurations to establish secure entry points and barriers and prevent unauthorized network traffic from reaching database servers.
Enforcing strong authentication and authorization: Implement multi-factor authentication and fine-grained access controls that define user roles and permissions based on your organization's security policies.
Managing network device updates: Conduct regular updates and patches for routers, switches, and firewalls to eliminate security risks and defend against emerging threats.
Principle of least privilege
Default IAM roles and access policies often give database administrators and users more access than they need to perform their jobs. When authorized users accumulate permissions over time, it gives rise to permission creep, which is a significant concern for database security. It increases both the attack surface and the potential impact of any cyberattacks.
For example, it’s common for legacy admin roles to still have access to production databases long after they’re needed. This unnecessary access increases the risk of data breaches and makes lateral movement easier for attackers.
Applying the principle of least privilege means granting each user only the minimum set of permissions they need to perform their responsibilities. This proactive cybersecurity approach prevents attackers from exploiting stolen user accounts for lateral movement and provides security at both the host and data layers.
Zero Trust security model
The Zero Trust security model operates on the principles of least privilege and explicit verification. Because this model always assumes a breach (and that attackers may be present both outside and inside the network), it continuously authenticates and authorizes each access request to prevent data breaches and limit lateral movement.
In the Zero Trust model, the policy decision point and policy enforcement point are responsible for authenticating and authorizing the subject device. Additionally, this model checks other factors about the subject device, such as the request location, time, and the subject's security posture. This approach effectively secures the network, host, and data layers to ensure the system allows only verified and authorized actions at every step.
Auditing
Auditing is crucial for identifying unauthorized user activities and ensuring compliance with regulatory standards. By systematically logging who accessed the database, the changes they made, and when, auditing helps teams maintain data integrity and security.
Audit tools like Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall, Wiz, and Microsoft SQL Server Audit automate the collection and analysis of audit logs. You can use these solutions to detect unauthorized or suspicious activities automatically at both the data and host layers.
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Secure your databases with Wiz
Securing enterprise databases requires more than encryption and access controls. Today’s attackers exploit everything from misconfigurations to software flaws. That makes it critical to take a layered approach to protection, covering discovery, monitoring, and compliance.
But checklists and manual reviews can’t keep up with the scale and complexity of the cloud. As environments grow, internal teams often struggle to track where sensitive data lives and how it’s exposed.
That’s where Wiz comes in.
Our platform helps you secure critical databases by delivering:
Continuous data discovery and classification: Automatically scans databases, cloud storage, and code repositories to identify and classify sensitive data.
Graph-based risk assessment: Links sensitive data to identities, permissions, vulnerabilities, and lateral movement capabilities to prioritize risks and pinpoint attack paths.
Automated threat detection: Monitors database and cloud activity for suspicious behaviors like unauthorized access and privilege escalation, with detailed access reviews to enforce least privilege.
Compliance assessment and reporting: Maps security posture to frameworks like PCI DSS and HIPAA to acquire compliance visibility and simplify audits.
Ready to assess and strengthen your database defenses? Check out Wiz's Data Risk Assessment solution. Or for more hands-on strategies, download our Data Security Best Practices Cheat Sheet to get actionable guidance for real-world database environments.
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