Instance level trigger to store login information (who created what)

  • Hello SSC,

    I am looking for a simplified way to track which user created which login, Surprisingly enough, the sys.logins table does not have this information. My company has SQL environments ranging from 2008 R2 - 2017. So this is going to be challenging. At the moment, we have no way in knowing who created logins on our production environments.

    So, since our outdated environment goes back as far as 2008 R2, I figured instance level triggers would do the trick. I am not sure if SQL has that capability on 2008 R2, 2012, 2014, 2016, or 2017. I know there are DLL triggers, but are they instance level?

    Also, what would SSC recommend for this, if not triggers? Extended events is an option, but it's doubtful that my company will approve this method.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated!

    The are no problems, only solutions. --John Lennon

  • It's not really an instance-level trigger, it's a db level trigger for the master db, because all logins are created in the master db.  The DDL event would be CREATE_LOGIN (and ALTER_LOGIN if you care about that).

    I'm not familiar with a "sys.logins" view, but I'm not surprised that SQL doesn't capture creator info, etc., since the overhead of doing so would be enormous and the vast majority of people would never need it or use it.

     

    SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) "It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear." "Norm", on "Cheers". Also from "Cheers", from "Carla": "You need to know 3 things about Tortelli men: Tortelli men draw women like flies; Tortelli men treat women like flies; Tortelli men's brains are in their flies".

  • Thanks for the quick response, but my company will never allow a trigger in master.

    Do you know of any SQL 3rd party tools that handle something like this?

    The are no problems, only solutions. --John Lennon

  • Why go with triggers? Use Extended Events. I don't have a blog post on tracking creation of logins using Extended Events available. Here's one on auditing database changes. You can just do a quick search for object creation and auditing to find the right event. This will be much easier, with lower resource use, and doesn't involve doing weird stuff to the master database. Further, setting these up on multiple servers is fast & easy.

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  • have a look at Scope: The drastic caveat with Logon Triggers

     

    Johan

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  • I tried to come up with something other than Extended Events because of this in OP's q:

    Extended events is an option, but it's doubtful that my company will approve this method.

    SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) "It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear." "Norm", on "Cheers". Also from "Cheers", from "Carla": "You need to know 3 things about Tortelli men: Tortelli men draw women like flies; Tortelli men treat women like flies; Tortelli men's brains are in their flies".

  • I would lean towards XE myself, though I'm not sure why your company would not allow that.

    I believe SQL Audit will capture this, but I'd have to dig in. There is an event for logins.

    Audit - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/security/auditing/sql-server-audit-database-engine?view=sql-server-ver15

    Events - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/event-classes/audit-login-change-property-event-class?view=sql-server-ver15

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