Life we be so much easier if we could just trust everyone, but since we can’t we need solid security for our databases. Azure SQL Database has many security features to make you sleep well at night:
- Transparent data encryption (TDE). This encrypts your databases, associated backups, and transaction log files at rest without requiring changes to your applications. See Transparent Data Encryption with Azure SQL Database
- Always Encrypted. In preview. Protects sensitive data without having to relinquish the encryption keys to Azure SQL Database. Data remains encrypted at all times – in transit, in memory, on disk and even during query processing. It is field-level encryption. See Always Encrypted for Azure SQL Database
- Row-level security. Enables fine-grained access over rows in a table. For Multi-tenant data access isolation. See Azure SQL Database Row-Level Security
- Cell-level encryption. Encrypt a column of data by using symmetric encryption. See Recommendations for using Cell Level Encryption in Azure SQL Database
- Dynamic data masking. In preview. Obfuscate confidential data in the result set of a query. See Dynamic Data Masking for Azure SQL Database
- Firewall. IP address and port filtering. See How to configure an Azure SQL database firewall
- SQL Authentication, which uses a username and password
- Azure Active Directory Authentication. Simplifies password management by allowing you to connect to a number of Azure services including Azure SQL Database using the same identity. See Connecting to SQL Database By Using Azure Active Directory Authentication
- Server-level and database-level roles. Role-based security allows you to assign permissions to a role, or group of users, instead of to individual users. See Server and Database Roles in SQL Server
- SQL Database Auditing: Log data access/change trails for regulatory compliance. See Get started with SQL database auditing and Monitor your Azure SQL Database Auditing activity with Power BI
- SQL Database Threat Detection: Receive alerts on suspicious database activities at the database or logical server level. See Get started with SQL Database Threat Detection
- Secure connection strings: Write secure connection strings for SQL Database. See Windows Azure SQL Database Connection Security
More info:
Security Center for SQL Server Database Engine and Azure SQL Database
Security and Azure SQL Database technical white paper
Azure SQL Database security guidelines and limitations
Microsoft Azure SQL Database provides unparalleled data security in the cloud with Always Encrypted