Automating Security Audits for MySQL

Taking care of the security of your MySQL instances is a near-daily task of almost every MySQL DBA. Today, we will look into how you should go about automating security audits for MySQL.

Why Automate Security Audits for MySQL?

MySQL security is a very important, but complex topic. If you’re a MySQL DBA, chances are that you have worked on securing your MySQL database instance(s) at least once – and when you did, you probably thought what a tedious and time consuming process that is. When securing your MySQL database instance(s) you need to take care of access control, know what privileges and roles are, how password management and account locking in MySQL works, what do MySQL security plugins do and how to secure your MySQL backups. That’s a lot of things you need to keep an eye on – couldn’t processes like that be automated? Yes, they can!

As far as MySQL is concerned, automating security audits might help you take some MySQL security related hassle off your hands. When your security audits for MySQL are automated, you will no longer need to worry about whether your MySQL database instances are secure and whether your MySQL database instance(s) are not being attacked while you’re asleep, it also means that you can encrypt the connections between clients and the server using the TLS protocol, enable policy-based monitoring and logging of query activity etc. Security audits for MySQL can be easily automated using ClusterControl for MySQL – we will look into how you should go about doing that now.

Automating Security Audits for MySQL with ClusterControl

Thankfully, if you want to automate security audits for MySQL, ClusterControl for MySQL can make this task way easier for you. ClusterControl for MySQL can help you ensure that your MySQL database deployments always adhere to a maximum level of security and keep your critical data safe via encryption at rest and in transit. If you want to have a look at what ClusterControl can do to secure your database (not only MySQL) instances, simply head over to the Security tab of ClusterControl and observe what ClusterControl can do for you. For example, here’s what you would probably see if you run MariaDB Galera Cluster and monitor it with ClusterControl:

Click “Enable” under SSL encryption and you will be presented with the following:

You can choose an encryption type (you can either create a certificate or use an existing one), then setup certificate expiration details and click Enable SSL:

With ClusterControl you can also take encrypted backups of your data – ClusterControl will create your backups for you. To encrypt your data when taking it, simply check “Enable Encryption” during the third stage:

You can also configure the audit log details and enable the audit log afterwards:

Audit logs are important for security because when they’re enabled, they enable policy-based monitoring and logging of connection and query activity meaning that when they’re enabled, you can observe your query activity, detect any anomalies and quickly act on them.

Enabling SSL will encrypt all of the connections between the client and the server that is in use, enabling galera SSL encryption will encrypt replication traffic between the database nodes using the TLS protocol and enabling the audit log will enable policy-based monitoring and logging of connection and query activity meaning that you will no longer need to worry about whether your queries are formed maliciously. With that being said, ClusterControl can also help you with other things related to your database performance – as you can see, ClusterControl can help you with a multitude of other things including the monitoring of the performance of your queries, you can take a look at your database performance as a whole, you can backup or restore your data, you can see the details of running and completed jobs (jobs can also be deleted) etc.

Summary

To summarize, automating security audits for MySQL can help you with a multitude of things ranging from SSL encryption to policy based monitoring and logging of connection and query activity. ClusterControl is not only useful for that though – ClusterControl can also help you with other things including, but not limited to allowing you to observe the topology of your database cluster, monitoring the performance of your queries and backup related issues: take a look at ClusterControl and decide for yourself.