Slides and Links from Yesterday’s Webcast

If you were able to attend yesterday’s webcast, thank you for attending.

Slides for Conducting a SQL Server Security Risk Assessment

If you weren’t the webinar is available on demand, though you will need to sign up on the MSSQLTips website.

Also, some of the relevant links:

• Center for Internet Security
• Brent Ozar Unlimited’s sp_blitz
• MSSQLTips articles on Security
• MSSQLTips articles on Auditing and Compliance
• My articles at MSSQLTips
• Idera’s SQL Compliance Manager
• Idera’s SQL Secure

 

MSSQLTips Webcast on Security

On February 11, 2016, at 3 PM EST, I’ll be giving a security webinar for MSSQLTips. It’s titled Performing a SQL Server Security Risk Assessment. Here’s the abstract:

You have one or more SQL Servers and you want to assess the security of each. What’s a priority? What puts your organization at the greatest risk? What should you attack first?

In this presentation, we’ll look at how to do a security risk assessment of SQL Server. We’ll cover all the common big ticket items, the ones that could lead to a server breach, data loss, or a system becoming unavailable due to mismanagement. Also, we’ll discuss how to assess other items which you may find and how to rank and prioritize them. Armed with this information, you’ll be better equipped to provide a to do list to your management with justifications and relative impact for each proposed change.

If you’re interested in attending the webinar, it’s free but you’ll need to register.

Midlands PASS February Meeting Cancelled

I woke up this morning feeling rough. Our constantly chaotic weather this winter has done me in again. As a result, I’m not in any condition to present tonight and I’m cancelling the meeting.

I’ll present on the topic of improving query performance at our March meeting. Look for an announcement soon with the meeting details.

 

Midlands PASS February 2016 Meeting

Midlands PASS has changed its meetings from the 2nd Thursday to the 2nd Tuesday of each month. This takes effect with this month’s meeting. We are still meeting at the same location in West Columbia, SC. However, the name of the organization has changed: Microstaff IT has become We Know IT!

For this month’s meeting on February 9th we are looking at improving queries. Here’s the abstract:

We want queries to run fast. The faster queries run, the less likely they are to get in the way of other queries (blocking). The faster queries run, the less likely they are to collide where one will have to be rolled back (deadlocking). And the faster queries run, the more queries we can pump through the system, thereby improving performance. In this presentation we’ll look at how the SQL Server query engine works: how it breaks down a query, how it uses indexes, and how it puts all this together to produce an execution plan. By understanding how the engine works, we’ll understand how to improve our queries.

If you can make it out, please RSVP so we’ll know how many refreshments to bring.