K. Brian Kelley

K. Brian Kelley is a SQL Server author and columnist focusing primarily on SQL Server security.

Brian Kelley is an author, columnist, Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), and former Microsoft Data Platform (SQL Server) MVP (2009-2016) focusing primarily on SQL Server and Windows security. Brian currently serves as a data architect as well as an independent infrastructure/security architect concentrating on Active Directory, SQL Server, and Windows Server. He has served in a myriad of other positions including senior database administrator, data warehouse architect, web developer, incident response team lead, and project manager. Brian has spoken at 24 Hours of PASS, IT/Dev Connections, SQLConnections, the Techno Security and Forensics Investigation Conference, the IT GRC Forum, SyntaxCon, and at various SQL Saturdays, Code Camps, and user groups.

2017 Awards MSSQLTips award

2015 Awards MSSQLTips award

2014 Awards MSSQLTips award

2013 Awards MSSQLTips award

2011 Awards

2009 Awards MSSQLTips award

Category	Tip Title
Auditing and Compliance	Audit SQL Server Logins without filling up the Error Log
Auditing and Compliance	Auditing Failed Logins in SQL Server
Auditing and Compliance	Auditing SELECT statements in SQL Server 2008
Auditing and Compliance	Auditing SQL Server 2012 Server Roles
Auditing and Compliance	Auditing SQL Server Password Age
Auditing and Compliance	Auditing SQL Server Permissions and Roles for the Server
Auditing and Compliance	Auditing SQL Server User and Role Permissions for Databases
Auditing and Compliance	Auditing sysadmin on multiple servers using PowerShell
Auditing and Compliance	Automate collection and saving of failed logins for SQL Server
Auditing and Compliance	How to Audit Login Changes on a SQL Server
Auditing and Compliance	Identifying What Runs at Startup on SQL Server
Auditing and Compliance	SQL Server Encryption To Block DBAs Data Access
Auditing and Compliance	SQL Server Security Auditing to Match Logins And Users
Auditing and Compliance	Tables and Views for Auditing SQL Server Logins
Auditing and Compliance	Using a Backup to Find SQL Server Security Changes
Auditing and Compliance	What to Audit at the SQL Server Instance Level
Auditing and Compliance	What Windows Server Groups Should I Audit on my SQL Servers?
Backup	How to Identify and Backup the Latest SQL Server Database in a Series
Backup	The Statement Backup Log is Not Allowed for a SQL Server Transaction Log Backup
Clustering	Understanding why there is still downtime for SQL Server with Microsoft Clustering
Contained Databases	How to Audit for SQL Server Users in Contained Databases
Database Administration	Determining Drive Letters in Use by SQL Server Databases
Database Administration	How to move a SQL Server database within the same instance without losing settings
Database Configurations	Verify Connectivity to SQL Server
Database Design	Data Modeling: Understanding First Normal Form in SQL Server
Database Design	Dealing with a No NULL Requirement for Data Modeling in SQL Server
Database Design	Understanding First Normal Form in SQL Server
Disaster Recovery	Disaster Recovery Planning for Microsoft SQL Server - Getting Backups and Restores Right
Disaster Recovery	Retrieving SQL Server Server Roles for Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery	Scripting SQL Server Database Owners for Disaster Recovery
Dynamic Management Views and Functions	Return SQL Server Connections Information Using sys.dm_exec_connections
Dynamic Management Views and Functions	SQL Server Case Sensitive Collations and DMVs
Encryption	Finding Encrypted Data in a SQL Server Database
Encryption	SQL Server Encryption Symmetric vs. Asymmetric Keys
Encryption	Using authenticators with SQL Server encryption
Encryption	Where Does SQL Server Store Its Certificates
Functions System	Understanding and Using SQL Server sys.dm_exec_requests
Functions System	Understanding and Using sys.dm_exec_sessions in SQL Server
Hardware	How to Monitor Storage Performance with a Single Application
Integration Services Import and Export Wizard	Export data to an earlier SQL Server version
Linked Servers	On demand creation and destruction of a SQL Server Linked Server
Linked Servers	On Demand Linked Server Creation with a SQL Server Login
Monitoring	SQL Server Forensics Analysis Based on Database Backup Size
Performance Tuning	SQL Server Implicit Conversions Performance Issues
Policy Based Management	SQL Server Policy Management to Enforce Database Settings in Development
PowerShell	Parsing all the files in a directory using PowerShell
Professional Development Books	New Book Introduction To SQL Server
Profiler and Trace	Using the Default Trace in SQL Server
Reporting Services Dynamic Reports	Getting started with report filters in SQL Server Reporting Services
Restore	How to Automate SQL Server Restores for a Test Server
Restore	Recovering a SQL Server TDE Encrypted Database Successfully
Restore	Why Can't I Restore a Database to an Older Version of SQL Server?
Scripts	Script SQL Server Logins for Disaster Recovery
Security	Add a Salt with the SQL Server HASHBYTES Function
Security	Application Database Security Design - Part 1 - Authentication for SQL Server
Security	Application Database Security Design Part 2 - Multiple Levels of Access to SQL Server
Security	Auditing Critical Windows Files and Folders for SQL Server
Security	Automated way to get all port information for SQL Server instances
Security	Best Practices to Secure the SQL Server sa Account
Security	Blocking SQL Server db_datareader, db_datawriter, and db_owner Permissions
Security	Breaking ownership chaining within a schema in SQL Server
Security	Can I stop a System Admin from enabling SQL Server xp_cmdshell?
Security	Cannot make a role a member of itself error in SQL Server
Security	Database level permissions for SQL Server 2005 and 2008
Security	Determining Permission Issues for a SQL Server Object
Security	Dynamic SQL and Ownership Chaining in SQL Server
Security	Filtering Columns in SQL Server Using Views
Security	Filtering SQL Server Columns Using Column Level Permissions
Security	Get Back into SQL Server After You've Locked Yourself Out
Security	Grant limited permissions to create SQL Server views in another schema Part 1
Security	Grant limited permissions to create SQL Server views in another schema Part 2
Security	How come I can create SQL Server objects but not access these objects
Security	How to Clone a SQL Server Login, Part 1 of 3
Security	How to Clone a SQL Server Login, Part 2 of 3
Security	How to Clone a SQL Server Login, Part 3 of 3
Security	How to configure password enforcement options for standard SQL Server logins
Security	How to Connect to a SQL Server Named Instance
Security	How to Create Secure SQL Server Service Accounts
Security	How to Enable Secondary Decryption of SQL Server Symmetric Keys
Security	How to Setup Row Level Security for SQL Server
Security	How to Unlock a SQL Login Without Resetting the Password
Security	Identify Local Administrators on a SQL Server box using PowerShell
Security	Identifying the Tie Between Logins and Users
Security	Implementing SQL Server Security with Stored Procedures and Views
Security	Implicit Permissions Due to Ownership Chaining or Scopes in SQL Server
Security	Implicit Permissions Due to SQL Server Database Roles
Security	Is disabling xp_cmdshell in SQL Server really secure?
Security	Issues Determining an Individual SQL Server User's Permissions
Security	Migrate the Correct Logins with a SQL Server Database
Security	Nesting Database Roles in SQL Server
Security	Network communications mechanisms for SQL Server
Security	New Security Catalog Views in SQL Server 2005 and SQL 2008
Security	Ownership chaining in SQL Server security feature or security risk
Security	Potential Security Exploit Using CONTROL SERVER Permissions in SQL Server
Security	Practice of Using Privileged Accounts to Access SQL Server
Security	Protecting SQL Server from Ransomware
Security	Protecting the SQL Server Backup folder
Security	Quickly Find Failed SQL Server Logins Using the Windows Event Log
Security	Replace xp_cmdshell command line use with SQL Server Agent
Security	Retrieving SQL Server Fixed Database Roles for Disaster Recovery
Security	Retrieving SQL Server Permissions for Disaster Recovery
Security	Server level permissions for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008
Security	Skip-2.0 Malware Impacts SQL Server - Should I Be Worried?
Security	SQL Server nested securable permissions
Security	SQL Server Permissions Granted to All Users By Default
Security	SQL Server Security Community Questions on Windows, Server Level, Database, Roles and more
Security	SQL Server Static Data Masking with DataVeil
Security	The Power of the SQL Server Database Owner
Security	Unable to see a SQL Server table
Security	Understanding Cross Database Ownership Chaining in SQL Server
Security	Understanding GRANT, DENY, and REVOKE in SQL Server
Security	Understanding How A User Gets Database Access in SQL Server
Security	Understanding how SQL Server handles Service Isolation
Security	Understanding SQL Server fixed database roles
Security	Understanding SQL Server fixed server roles
Security	Understanding SQL Server Ownership Chaining
Security	Understanding the importance of key length with the SQL Server asymmetric encryption algorithms
Security	Understanding the SQL Server HASHBYTES hashing algorithms
Security	Understanding the SQL Server Symmetric Encryption Algorithms
Security	Understanding When SQL Server Kerberos Delegation is Needed
Security	Using nmap to scan for SQL Servers on a network
Security	Using PowerShell to Audit for Blank SA Passwords
Security	Using Views to Expose Encrypted Data in SQL Server
Security	Why Can't I Set a Default SQL Server Schema for My Windows Group Login?
Security	Why System Account is a bad idea for SQL Server Service Account
SQL Injection	Using Triggers to Mitigate Some SQL Injection Effects
SQL Server Agent	Auditing for New SQL Server Agent Jobs
SQL Server Agent	Configuring Critical SQL Server Alerts
SQL Server Agent	Script to find failed SQL Server Backups and validate re-running code was successful
SQL Server Agent	SQL Server Agent Job Email Notifications via PowerShell
SQL Server Agent	Suppressing SQL Server Alerts to Reduce Emails
SQL Server Agent	Understanding how SQL Server Agent Jobs can share schedules
SQL Server Configurations	Catalog SQL Server Services Installed on Servers
SQL Server Configurations	How to setup and use a SQL Server alias
SQL Server Configurations	How to setup security features for SQL Server
SQL Server Configurations	Understanding the SQL Server SELECT @@VERSION command
SQL Server Configurations	Using Friendly Names for SQL Servers via DNS
SQL Server Configurations	Why listing all of your SQL Servers does not always work
Surface Area Configuration Manager	SQL Server security settings using the Surface Area Configuration tool
Surface Area Configuration Manager	SQL Server Surface Area Configuration for Features Option Selection
Triggers	Connecting to SQL Server with a Bad Logon Trigger
Triggers	SQL Server 2005 SysAdmin Login Auditing
Triggers	Understanding SQL Server inserted and deleted tables for DML triggers
TSQL	Minimum Permissions for SQL Server TRUNCATE TABLE
Views	Why You Should Avoid SELECT * in SQL Server T-SQL Code
Virtualization	Viewing VMware Counters in PerfMon for SQL Server

No Records Found

Category	Topic
Application Development	Writing efficient code for SQL Server Based Applications
Auditing and Compliance	Preparing Your SQL Servers for an Audit
Auditing and Compliance	SQL Server Data Security and Compliance
Database Design	Building Better Data Models
Database Design	Principles of Data Modeling
High Availability	WHOLE-ISTIC Protection of SQL Server in Azure
Performance Tuning	Why Are My SQL Server Queries So Slow?
Security	Building a Proper SQL Server Database Security Model

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