
- #EASY RANDOM QUOTES DATABASE TABLE UPDATE#
- #EASY RANDOM QUOTES DATABASE TABLE FULL#
- #EASY RANDOM QUOTES DATABASE TABLE SERIES#
Consider the Birthdate column, which is configured with the DATE data type. The database engine handles date/time values differently. For example, a CHAR(2) column will return a masked value of xx. The database engine returns the xxxx value for all masked character data, unless the column is defined at a smaller size. The LastName column is defined with the NVARCHAR(50) data type. To begin with, the database engine returns each LastName value as xxxx. As the following table shows, the values in the four columns are now very different from how they’re stored in the database. We’re simply using the EXECUTE AS and REVERT statements to get the data that the new user would see. To test this out, let’s start by creating a local user account on the EmpData4 database and granting that account the SELECT permission: However, an account that has been granted only SELECT permission on the table will see the data as masked. When I created the table and then queried the data, I was logged in with an administrative account. The key to controlling access to masked data is in the privileges granted to the user accounts. When the database engine saw that we had access rights to that data, it returned the values just like they’re stored in the database. Notice that we did not have to change our query in any way and that the data is unchanged. For this reason, the SELECT statement will return the same results (shown in the following table) that we would get if the masking rules had not been added to the column definitions.
#EASY RANDOM QUOTES DATABASE TABLE FULL#
When creating the table, we’ll use the default function to mask four of the columns, as shown in the following T-SQL script:īecause we’re running the query under a privileged account, we have full access to the data, despite having implemented the masking rules. To demonstrate how this works, we’ll start by creating a table and populating it with data from the AdventureWorks2014 database. Microsoft’s documentation is a bit confusing in this regard because it suggests otherwise, but you need only specify the function name and an empty set of parentheses.

It is important to note that the default function does not take any arguments. The exact nature of the replacement value depends on the column’s data type. When you use this function to mask data, and a user with read-only privileges queries that data, the database engine masks the entire value and returns a replacement value. The first DDM function we’ll tackle is default. But keep in mind that DDM should be used only as part of a much larger strategy for protecting data, a strategy that will likely include real encryption.
#EASY RANDOM QUOTES DATABASE TABLE UPDATE#
You need only update your column definitions and perhaps tweak the permissions on certain accounts. The DDM feature is easy to implement and requires no changes to the queries themselves. Even Microsoft admits that “unprivileged users with ad-hoc query permissions can apply techniques to gain access to the actual data.”Īlthough DDM is not really encryption, it still seems worth including it in this series, if for no other reason than to be complete. The database engine merely replaces the sensitive data with non-identifying characters. No data is being encrypted at rest or in motion. The feature simply masks data for non-privileged users upon querying a protected column.
#EASY RANDOM QUOTES DATABASE TABLE SERIES#
I’ve included DDM in this series because Microsoft documentation ( SQL Server Encryption) implies that DDM is a type of SQL Server encryption.


Encrypting SQL Server: Dynamic Data Masking - Simple Talk
