Authentication and access control are two crucial factors in securing databases and their servers. One, authentication, controls who can access the data resource, and in what capacity, while the other, access control, specifies what a user can do once they have been authenticated.
Historically, authentication and access have been managed entirely by SQL Server, but Azure has enabled integrated password and multi-factor authentication courtesy of Azure Active Directory, along with built-in SQL DB roles.
This course looks at various ways to integrate Azure SQL with Azure Active Directory and how to best manage user privileges once logged into the database.
If you have any feedback relating to this course, please contact us at support@cloudacademy.com.
Learning Objectives
- Get a basic understanding of the history and context of SQL authentication
- Understand how to to use Azure Active Directory to authenticate users with a SQL database
- Learn how to use database roles to customize access
- Understand the principle of least privilege and how to apply it
- Learn how to fine-tune access to database objects
Intended Audience
This course is intended for database administrators using Azure, or anyone who wants to understand more about using Azure Active Directory to authenticate a user to access a database.
Prerequisites
To get the most out of this course, you should have a basic understanding of databases and the Azure platform.
Hi, welcome to this course on Azure database authentication and access. In this course, we will be looking at ways you authenticate users against an Azure SQL database or one of its variants like SQL managed Instance. Then once a user is authenticated, how you can configure different levels of access to objects within the database based on the principle of least privilege access.
This is a beginner’s level course aimed not only at database administration but general user administration. One of the main topics in this course is using Azure Active Directory to authenticate a user to access a database. That being the case, it will be helpful to know a little about Azure Active Directory and the concept of roles and user groups.
My name is Hallam Webber, and I’ll be your instructor for this course. We welcome all comments and feedback, so please feel free to reach out to us at support@cloudacademy.com with any questions or comments. Let’s get started.
Hallam is a software architect with over 20 years experience across a wide range of industries. He began his software career as a Delphi/Interbase disciple but changed his allegiance to Microsoft with its deep and broad ecosystem. While Hallam has designed and crafted custom software utilizing web, mobile and desktop technologies, good quality reliable data is the key to a successful solution. The challenge of quickly turning data into useful information for digestion by humans and machines has led Hallam to specialize in database design and process automation. Showing customers how leverage new technology to change and improve their business processes is one of the key drivers keeping Hallam coming back to the keyboard.