IT Baseline Protection Manual - The Information Warfare Site

Safeguard Catalogue - Organisation Remarks
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S 2.129 Controlling access to database information
Initiation responsibility: Head of IT Section, IT Security Management
Implementation responsibility: Administrators
A number of measures are required to effectively protect the confidentiality
and integrity of data in a database. In addition to measures for controlling
access to a database system, described in S 2.128 Controlling access to a
database system, the following measures are essentially needed for controlling
access to database information:
- Protection of database objects
The database objects, i.e. tables, indices, database procedures etc. should
be assigned logically to the applications using these objects. The resulting
groups of database objects pertaining to each application are each assigned
an account configured specially for this purpose. This allows the access
rights on the database objects to be defined such that the objects can only
be modified via these special IDs. If several applications access the same
database objects, these should be put into a separate group.
For example, if the data of two applications A and B are to be managed in
the database, two database accounts - apnA and apnB - need to be created.
All database objects which can be allocated uniquely to application A are
configured and managed with database account apnA. The database objects
of application B are handled similarly.
One example of a central database object used by both applications is a
table which lists all the printers installed. Database objects in this category
should not be assigned one of the existing accounts (apnA or apnB);
instead, such database objects should be grouped and managed centrally
under a separate account (e.g. print).
Such special IDs are not related to persons. Instead, staff members
authorised specifically for this purpose (e.g. the administrator of the
database or the corresponding application) receive the password of the
required account if the database objects need to be modified.
- Data security
Special views can be configured for users, allowing data to be rendered
visible or kept concealed in accordance with specified criteria. A view is
used to explicitly define the fields of one or more tables which can be
viewed by a user. A restrictive allocation of access rights (or grants, as
described below) for such views allows confidential data to be protected
against unauthorised access.
Access rights (grants) need to be allocated for tables, views and even
individual fields of a table. These rights generally pertain to individual
users, roles or user groups. However, such access rights should always be
granted to user groups or roles, not to individual users, as a high number of
users would require a great deal of administrative effort in this case. The
following types of access rights are available: read, update, delete and
insert. Access rights should be granted as sparingly as possible, otherwise
it becomes increasingly difficult to retain a clear overview of the actual
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IT-Baseline Protection Manual: Oktober 2000