Native Integrations

Monitor SQL Server changes, logons, and permissions with Log360

Overview

Microsoft SQL Server is one of the most widely used relational database management systems across enterprise environments. Given the critical nature of the data it holds, monitoring access and activity within SQL Server is essential for ensuring data security, detecting insider threats, meeting compliance mandates, and responding to potential breaches.

Log360 integrates seamlessly with SQL Server to ingest audit logs, analyze database activities, detect anomalies, and provide security teams with complete visibility into database interactions. This integration supports real-time monitoring, alerting, and detailed reporting across a wide range of SQL Server event types.

Monitoring and analytics capabilities

Log360 empowers organizations to continuously monitor their SQL Server environments with:

Real-time alerting for suspicious behavior, including privilege abuse, abnormal logon attempts, and schema changes.
Comprehensive auditing of DDL and DML operations across all user sessions and databases.
Trend analysis of logon behavior, table usage, permission grants, and backup activity.
In-depth advanced reporting, offering visibility into performance bottlenecks, structural changes, and connected applications.
Correlated insights across the broader IT environment by linking SQL Server logs with logs from AD, firewalls, and endpoints.
Long-term forensic support with indexed storage and advanced querying for compliance and investigations.

Critical SQL Server events monitored

Log360 tracks a wide range of events to provide granular visibility into SQL Server activity, including:

DDL auditing reports: Monitor structural changes such as the creation, modification, or removal of tables, stored procedures, views, and triggers.
DML auditing reports: Track insert, update, and delete actions on data, especially in sensitive or high-value tables.
Logon and logout events: Capture successful and failed logon attempts with source details, including IP address and application.
Startup and shutdown events: Monitor when SQL Server services are started or stopped, ensuring continuous uptime.
Principal changes: Detect when server- or database-level users, roles, or logins are created, modified, or deleted.
Password changes and authentication behavior: Report on account-level changes and failed access attempts.
Audit policy changes: Highlight when auditing settings are altered, potentially exposing the system to blind spots.
Backup and restore events: Provide visibility into all backup activities, including unauthorized or unplanned backups.
Security and permission changes: Alert on changes in privileges, access control, or denial of permissions.
Trace and integrity events: Record changes in trace configurations and integrity constraints.
Advanced auditing reports: Provide deep, contextual insights into operational behavior across users, tables, sessions, and schemas.

Key benefits

Deep visibility into SQL Server behavior across users, objects, and sessions.
Advanced analytics and reporting that go beyond traditional audit logs to include schema history, performance metrics, and user behavior.
Proactive threat detection, helping users to identify malicious activities like unauthorized privilege escalation or direct table manipulation.
Unified correlation with logs from other parts of the infrastructure for a complete view of security incidents.
Audit-readiness and compliance alignment with standards like SOX, the PCI DSS, HIPAA, and the GDPR.
Real-time and scheduled alerts for high-risk changes, logon anomalies, and operational failures.

Addressing key SQL Server security challenges

SQL Server security challenge	How Log360 solves it
SQL injection attempts	Detects abnormal DML activity patterns, suspicious query behavior, failed logons, privilege escalations, and unauthorized data access. Correlates events across logons, DML actions, and account modifications to surface potential injection attempts.
Unauthorized data or schema changes	Audits DDL, DML, and column-level changes with complete user attribution.
Inconsistent backup and integrity operations	Reports last backup activity and DBCC checks to validate database health.
Misuse of elevated privileges	Monitors role changes, permission grants, and denied actions.
Application-level vulnerabilities	Identifies connected applications and their database interaction patterns.
Visibility gaps due to audit tampering	Detects changes to audit configurations and traces in real time.
Insider threats via direct data manipulation	Logs and alerts on update and delete operations in critical tables.