What are the best real-time database activity monitoring tools for preventing data breaches?

1 What is real-time database activity monitoring?

Real-time database activity monitoring (DAM) is a process of collecting, analyzing, and alerting on database events that occur in your database environment. DAM tools can track and record who, what, when, where, and how data is accessed or changed in your databases. They can also identify and block malicious queries, enforce policies and rules, and generate reports and audits. DAM tools can help you comply with data security regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS, and prevent data breaches by detecting and responding to threats in real time.

2 How does real-time database activity monitoring work?

Real-time database activity monitoring tools can work in different ways, depending on the architecture and features of the tool. For example, network-based tools monitor the network traffic between the database and applications or users that access it, analyzing SQL queries and responses and filtering out irrelevant or benign ones. Agent-based tools install an agent on the database server or host machine to intercept database activity. Moreover, API-based tools use native APIs or hooks of the database to capture activity, accessing internal logs and events for analysis and alerting. All of these methods can block or modify queries that violate policies or rules.

3 What are the benefits of real-time database activity monitoring?

Real-time database activity monitoring tools can provide you with several benefits, such as visibility into who is accessing your data, what they are doing with it, when they are doing it, where they are doing it from, and how they are doing it. You can also detect and prevent data breaches, enforce data security policies and rules, and comply with data security regulations. Moreover, you can generate reports and audits that show the details and evidence of your database activity and compliance status. This allows you to monitor the impact of the data access or change on your database performance and availability, as well as demonstrate that you have implemented adequate controls and measures to protect your data.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?