Problem
With the many needs (SOX, HIPAA, internal, etc.) for auditing sensitive data, what are the options available in the market place to audit SQL Server data and code changes? Do these products automatically collect the data as well as build reports and selectively alert on critical issues?
Solution
Below outlines the SQL Server auditing products on the market with URL’s to the product for more information.
| ID | Offering | Data Changes | Code Changes | Auto Data Collection | Reporting | Real Time Alerting |
| 1 | ApexSQL Audit | * | * | * | ||
| 2 | Idera Compliance Manager | * | * | * | * | * |
| 3 | Imperva | * | * | * | * | * |
| 4 | Change Auditor for SQL Server | * | * | * | * | |
| 5 | SQL Server Profiler | * | * | * | ||
| 6 | SQL Server Triggers | * | * | * |
If you know of additional SQL Server auditing products on the market, please let us know and we will update this tip. Please email the product\technology\tool to tips@mssqltips.com.
Next Steps
- Assess you needs from both a business and technology perspective to understand who and what needs to be audited to meet legal or internal needs.
- Check out these products to determine if they meet your needs and then determine if these products save time and energy as opposed to building a custom solution.
- If so, download a trial of one or more of these products and see how they work as well as close the loop with the individuals identifying the needs to validate the needs are met.
- For additional auditing tips from MSSQLTips.com check out these tips:
Jeremy Kadlec is a Founder, Editor and Author at MSSQLTips.com with more than 300 contributions and 25+ years of SQL Server experience. Jeremy leads a team of more than 300 authors helping millions of SQL Server professionals around the globe every second of the day for the last 20 years. He is also the CTO @ Edgewood Solutions and a six-time SQL Server MVP based on his community contributions. Jeremy brings 25+ years of SQL Server DBA and Developer knowledge to the community and holds a bachelor’s degree from SSU and master’s degree from UMBC.
I also have worked with the McAfee Product Suite for Databases before, specifically available for Microsoft SQL Server as well. Not a cheap product, but feature rich, so you get a lot of value for your money, licesed per instance. It looks like they were acquired by Trellix since then. see: https://www.trellix.com/en-us/products.html