McAfee, a security technology company, is offering a free downloadable audit plug-in for MySQL databases that records full activity audits, which are often required for enterprises to satisfy certain standards and regulations. The plug-in is designed to supplement McAfee's Database Activity Monitoring sensor. In combination, the plug-in and sensor can offer real-time analysis and policy enforcement for small and medium businesses as well as large enterprises.
According to the vendor, although organizations have demonstrated great concern regarding security and compliance in their databases, the vast majority do not currently employ a comprehensive database security solution. "Organizations are concerned with being able to comply with various standards and regulations, as well as being able to provide a full audit trail for their auditors," Nathan Shuchami, McAfee's vice president of database security solutions, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Despite this, Shuchami says, "No more than 25% of SMBs and Fortune 2000 organizations have a dedicated database security solution in place." As a result, he adds, enterprise databases have been left vulnerable to breach and attack, providing the potential for tremendous damage to organizations.
"There isn't any extension or out-of-the-box feature that comes with the MySQL database that affords the ability to fully audit all of the transactions that are hitting the database," says Shuchami, explaining the need for the new audit plug-in. Once activated, the plug-in will provide organizations with full audit capabilities including complete records for all transactions within their MySQL databases.
In addition, for customers that want to leverage the cloud but are somewhat reticent to do so given the security risks, this is a way for them to apply the first steps of enterprise-level database security around their sensitive data, points out Sean Roth, product marketing manager for database security at McAfee. McAfee's MySQL audit plug-in can be deployed non-intrusively across both physical and virtual environments, and requires no changes to existing database or network architecture to implement.
The open source MySQL audit plug-in is available for download here.
For more information, visit www.mcafee.com/dbsecurity.