Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
Ask HN: How to secure a database if employees are potential adversaries?
1 point by DevX101 on Jan 4, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments
Many (most?) companies secure databases using some combination of password keys or limiting the db from being publicly accessible on the internet.

But if an engineer with credentials were to get phished, or were actively malicious, these methods aren't sufficient.

What's the best practice of hardening a database from internal attacks? Let's assume there are <5 people in the company who can be fully trusted.



Where I work I don’t have a copy of the connection info for the production database at most times. I don’t want it. Maybe once a year I need to do something with it, then I get credentials from IT and I have them revoked as soon as I don’t need them anymore.


This is a good best practice in general. There are tools that can automate/audit this to reduce friction on the users. See: Privileged account management; there are a lot of players.


Only service accounts have access to the database. Those credentials are not shared with most developers. Audit logging including calling IP address enabled. Alerts are triggered on any access out of expected account/IP address range.




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: