Tag: Security
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Troubleshoot “Login Failed for User” (Error 18456) in SQL Server
Msg 18456, Level 14, State 1, Login failed for user 'pete'. is the most common security-related error in SQL Server, and it’s also the most useless on its own. Microsoft deliberately hides the real reason from the client for security (so an attacker can’t tell “wrong password” from “account doesn’t exist”), which means the error…
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DBA Scripts: Get Linked Servers
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.Related pillar: Server & Configuration Four Questions, One Topic: What’s Linked to This Server Linked servers are the kind of configuration that gets set up once, for one integration, and then forgotten until a migration or an incident forces someone to ask what’s actually…
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DBA Scripts: Fix Orphaned Users
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.Related pillar: Security From Finding Orphaned Users to Actually Fixing Them Get Orphaned Users answers “do I have this problem”. This script answers the next question: “what do I actually run to fix it”. After a database restore onto a server where the matching…
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DBA Scripts: Get Orphaned Users
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.Related pillar: Security An orphaned user is a database user whose SID no longer matches any server login, usually left behind after a database restore or attach on a different server, a migration, or a login that was dropped without cleaning up the database…
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DBA Scripts: Security
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks. Who Can Do What, What’s Happening, and What’s Missing Security on an inherited SQL Server instance breaks down into four genuinely different questions, and a single “run a security scan” checklist tends to blur them together. Who has privileged access, right now? What’s…
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DBA Scripts: Get Audit Specifications, DDL Triggers, and Proxy Credentials
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.Related pillar: Security Three Kinds of Infrastructure Most Servers Never Had in the First Place Some security infrastructure isn’t misconfigured, it just doesn’t exist. Get-AuditSpecifications checks for SQL Server Audit, the formal compliance mechanism for SOX/GDPR/PCI-DSS, and most inherited servers have none configured at…
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DBA Scripts: Get Certificates, Keys, and TDE Status
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.Related pillar: Security The Encryption Layer Nobody Monitors Until It Expires Certificates created for TDE, backup encryption, or an Availability Group encrypted endpoint get created once and then quietly forgotten. An expired certificate doesn’t break TDE in memory on the server that has it,…
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DBA Scripts: Get Login Security Audit
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.Related pillar: Security What’s Actually Happening at the Login Level, Not Just Who’s Allowed Permissions and Role Membership covers who can do what. These three scripts cover something different: what’s actually happening at the login layer right now. Get-FailedLoginSummary surfaces brute-force patterns and locked…
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DBA Scripts: Get Permissions and Role Membership
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.Related pillar: Security Who Can Actually Do What, at Every Level Sysadmin Members answers the single highest-stakes question: who has unrestricted access. These four scripts answer everything underneath that: explicit object and schema grants inside a database, explicit server-level grants and denies on logins,…
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DBA Scripts: Get User Permissions Audit
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.Related pillar: Security The One Login You Actually Care About Right Now Most permissions checks answer a broad question: who has sysadmin, what roles exist, what’s granted where. Useful for a periodic audit, but not what you reach for when someone asks “why does…
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