Database Activity Monitoring (DAM) is an important part of a large organization’s security and compliance strategy. DAM monitors database activity continuously in real time, and creates alerts and reports based on the aggregated information it oversees. When paired with encryption, organizations have a robust security posture that protects database data from an array of threats ranging from privileged insider risk to physical theft.
DAM solutions are designed to monitor data access in real time and use policies to prevent unauthorized access and provide additional layer of security and protection in opposition to malicious attacks. While there are clear advantages to this approach, organizations face a broad range of risks that fall outside the scope of what a DAM is designed and asked to do.
Security and compliance professionals are facing more data, regulations, and security tools than ever before – with obstacles to sensitive data protection growing larger every day. Solving database security problems was the genesis of the DAM market, but compliance is what drives adoption of the technology today. While there is overlap with other security and management platforms, database activity monitoring offers features and functions found nowhere else.
Database activity monitoring is done by combining several techniques such as network sniffing, memory scraping and reading system tables and database audit logs. Regardless of the methods used, DAM tools enable data correlation so as to provide an accurate picture of all the activities in the database.
These tools also allow relevant authorities to detect, identify and take corrective measures against threats and attacks, and provide forensic evidence when a data breach occurs. Depending on the configuration of the DAM tools, an administrator or auditor may be able to reconstruct data or restore it to a previous state.