Do you know the default users and passwords on Oracle databases? They're identified in the documentation for some versions, with the admonishment that these values should be changed. I've used those defaults on more Oracle databases than I care to count. SQL Server learned from this and there is no default username and password enabled on new SQL Server instances in recent versions. However, if you enable mixed mode authentication, please make sure you set a password.

There are numerous defaults that developers create for their software. In many cases, these are chosen to make setup easier on the user. However all too often the defaults are not set to the values that users would prefer, or what are the most secure settings. Sometimes vendors even changes the defaults during an upgrade to make them worse. If you are not careful, you might even end up exposing data you never expected to expose, as security researchers found at Amazon S3.

These days it seems to be more and more important that system administrators, especially database administrators, do not blindly accept defaults. They must be more concerned with security than ease of setup and use since the many data breaches make the news and I'm sure it won't be long before we see administrators getting terminated for not paying enough attention to configuration settings. With templates and tools being used for quickly creating new virtual machines, one poor security setting could be replicated to a large number of systems.

There are some good tools available for SQL Server, including PBM, which is built into all modern versions and editions. There are settings to force password changes and ensure compliance with your company policies. There's no excuse these days for not having servers that are configured correctly, using the defaults only when they are appropriate.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

No podcast today due to technical issues. We will return with our podcasts tomorrow.