Database Security & Backup Audit
Free Cloud Database Security & Backup Audit (RDS, Aurora, Azure SQL, Cloud SQL, DynamoDB, Cosmos DB)
A read-only audit of every managed database in your cloud estate - RDS, Aurora, Azure SQL, Cloud SQL, DynamoDB, Cosmos DB, Spanner, Redshift, Synapse, MongoDB Atlas, OpenSearch - covering public exposure, encryption, IAM authentication, audit logging, ransomware-resistant immutable backups, and restore testing. Mapped to CIS DB Benchmarks, PCI-DSS, HIPAA §164.312, GDPR Article 32, and SOC 2 CC6 - verified by a senior database-security engineer.
- Covers RDS, Aurora, Azure SQL, Cloud SQL, DynamoDB, Cosmos DB, Spanner, Redshift, Synapse, BigQuery, Snowflake, MongoDB Atlas, OpenSearch, Cassandra, and Redis / ElastiCache / Memorystore
- Combines AWS RDS Recommendations, Inspector, Macie, Azure Defender for SQL, Purview, GCP SCC, DLP, and Prowler - mapped to CIS DB Benchmarks, PCI-DSS, HIPAA §164.312, GDPR Article 32, and SOC 2 CC6
- Senior database-security engineer verifies every finding - typical first audit surfaces 1-3 publicly exposed databases, 5-15 over-permissive DB roles, 20-40% backups never restore-tested, and 1-2 EOL engines
- Read-only describe APIs only
- No SELECT, no data-plane access
- Senior database-security-engineer verified
- Live findings walkthrough included
Supported Platforms
What We Audit Across Your Database Estate
Six areas - exposure, encryption, IAM, ransomware-resistant backups, audit logging, and patch posture - benchmarked against CIS Database Benchmarks, PCI-DSS, HIPAA §164.312, GDPR Article 32, SOC 2 CC6, and the AWS / Azure / GCP Well-Architected pillars.
Public Exposure & Network Isolation
Detects publicly reachable RDS, Aurora, Cloud SQL, Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, DynamoDB, Spanner, Redshift, Synapse, OpenSearch, and MongoDB Atlas endpoints, misconfigured security groups and NSGs, missing PrivateLink / Private Endpoints / VPC Service Controls, and weak parameter-group defaults (rds.force_ssl, require_secure_transport) - mapped to CIS DB Benchmarks and PCI-DSS Requirement 1.
Encryption, TDE, Always Encrypted & PII Discovery
Validates encryption at rest (KMS / CMK, Key Vault BYOK, CMEK), TLS enforcement, Transparent Data Encryption, Always Encrypted, and PII / PHI / cardholder-data discovery via Amazon Macie, Microsoft Purview, and GCP DLP - mapped to PCI-DSS Req 3, HIPAA §164.312(a)(2)(iv), and GDPR Article 32.
IAM Authentication, Role Privilege & Secrets Rotation
Reviews IAM database authentication (RDS IAM auth, Cloud SQL IAM auth, Azure AD authentication for SQL, Cosmos DB AAD), database-level role hygiene, connection string security, secrets management (AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, GCP Secret Manager), rotation policy, and connection pooling via RDS Proxy or PgBouncer.
Ransomware-Resistant Backups, Immutability & Restore Testing
Assesses automated backup configuration, retention vs RPO targets, point-in-time recovery, cross-region / cross-account copies, immutable backups (AWS Backup Vault Lock, Azure immutable vault and soft-delete, GCP Backup and DR), and the single most-overlooked control of all - your actual restore-test schedule and last successful test date.
Audit Logging, DAM & Query Visibility
Checks pgAudit / MySQL audit plugin coverage, slow-query logs, RDS / Aurora enhanced monitoring, Performance Insights, Azure SQL Auditing and Threat Detection, GCP Database Audit Logs, DynamoDB / Cosmos DB / Spanner audit settings, and SIEM integration with Security Hub, Sentinel, Chronicle, Splunk, or Imperva / IBM Guardium DAM.
Version, Patch & Database Security Score
Identifies end-of-life engine versions (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB), pending minor version upgrades, maintenance-window configuration, and Aurora Serverless v2 / Global / cross-region replica posture. Returns a 0-100 Database Security Risk Score per area with Crawl / Walk / Run maturity.
How It Works
Register & Grant Read-Only Access
We provide a ready-to-deploy read-only IAM Role, App Registration, or Service Account scoped strictly to database describe / list APIs and config metadata - no SELECT permission, no data-plane access, no ability to snapshot or restore. Step-by-step setup guides for every major cloud and managed-DB platform.
Automated Posture & Backup Scan
We collect every database instance, parameter group, security group, IAM and database-level role, audit configuration, backup vault, and restore-test history. Layered with posture signal from AWS RDS Recommendations, Inspector for RDS, Trusted Advisor, Macie, Azure Defender for SQL / Cosmos DB, Purview, GCP SCC, GCP DLP - plus Prowler, ScoutSuite, Steampipe.
Senior Database-Security Engineer Verification
A senior database-security engineer reviews every finding, removes false positives (e.g. legitimate public read replicas with proper auth and TLS), models blast radius and ransomware impact, validates restore-test evidence, and rewrites recommendations as copy-pasteable AWS CLI / az / gcloud commands.
Receive Report & Live Debrief
Get your Database Security Risk Score, public-exposure inventory, encryption and IAM gap report, ransomware-resistant backup plan with restore-test schedule, audit-logging coverage map, EOL engine list, and prioritised remediation backlog - within 1-2 business days, plus a 45-minute live walkthrough.
What You Get
Your report will include the following deliverables.
Find the database that's one config change away from a breach.
Get a senior-engineer-verified Database Security & Backup Report covering exposure, encryption, IAM authentication, ransomware-resistant immutable backups, and restore testing - read-only describe APIs only, no SELECT, no data-plane access, completely free.
Get My Database Security & Backup ReportHow We Handle Your Database Configuration
A database security audit must never become a database incident. Here is exactly what we read - and what never leaves your environment.
Read-Only Describe APIs Only - No SELECT
We use a read-only IAM Role (AWS), App Registration (Azure), or Service Account (GCP) scoped strictly to database describe / list APIs (rds:Describe*, dynamodb:Describe*, sql:Read, spanner:Read), KMS describe, backup describe, and CloudTrail / Activity Log / Cloud Audit Log read. The role explicitly cannot run SELECT, cannot connect to any database endpoint, cannot trigger snapshots or restores, and cannot modify any setting.
No Data-Plane Access, No Row Reads
The audit reads database configuration metadata only - instance settings, parameter groups, security groups, IAM policies, encryption configuration, backup vault settings, audit-logging configuration, and aggregate query-log metrics where available. We never connect to any database, read tables, query views, or sample rows. PII / PHI / cardholder-data discovery is performed by your existing in-environment tools (Macie, Purview, DLP) - only the aggregate findings are reviewed.
Auto-Revoked & Destroyed After Audit
As soon as your Database Security Report is delivered, every credential is revoked, the analysis sandbox is destroyed, and your configuration export is deleted. Only aggregate, anonymised findings are retained for QA - never database identifiers, ARNs, instance names, schema names, or table identifiers.
Frequently Asked Questions
The most common questions we hear from teams running this assessment.
What access do you actually need? Will the audit ever read our database contents?
No. We use a read-only IAM Role (AWS), App Registration (Azure), or Service Account (GCP) scoped strictly to database describe / list APIs (rds:Describe*, dynamodb:Describe*, sql:Read, spanner:Read), KMS, Secrets Manager / Key Vault / Secret Manager describe, backup describe, and CloudTrail / Activity Log / Cloud Audit Log read. The role explicitly cannot run SELECT, cannot connect to any database endpoint, cannot pull snapshots, and has zero write permissions. We provide the policy JSON in advance for your security team to review.
Which database engines and platforms do you support?
All major managed and self-managed engines: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, and Oracle on RDS / Aurora / Cloud SQL / Azure SQL / on EC2 / on VMs / on Kubernetes; Aurora Serverless v2 and Aurora Global; DynamoDB, Cosmos DB, Firestore, Cloud Spanner; warehouses Redshift, Synapse, BigQuery, Snowflake; search OpenSearch and Elasticsearch; document MongoDB Atlas and DocumentDB; wide-column Cassandra and Amazon Keyspaces; and caches Redis / ElastiCache / Memorystore / Azure Cache for Redis.
How do you assess ransomware-resistance for backups?
Ransomware-resistance is scored explicitly. We check whether backups are immutable (AWS Backup Vault Lock in compliance mode, Azure Backup immutable vault, GCP Backup and DR Service with Object Lock), whether they live in a separate account or subscription with break-glass access only, whether MFA-delete is enforced on backup buckets, retention vs RPO targets, cross-region copies, and most importantly whether restore tests are actually executed and the last successful restore date. The most common gap we find is backups that exist but have never been restore-tested.
Do you cover PII / PHI / cardholder-data discovery?
Yes - through your existing in-environment tooling. We review findings from Amazon Macie, Microsoft Purview, GCP Sensitive Data Protection (DLP), and any DSPM platform you run (Wiz, Orca, Prisma Cloud, BigID, Securiti) and map sensitive data to specific tables and columns, then check that those targets have appropriate encryption, IAM authentication, RLS, audit logging, and immutable backups. We never read row contents ourselves; the audit consumes the aggregate classification metadata your tools already produce.
How is this different from running AWS RDS Recommendations or Azure Defender for SQL ourselves?
Those tools produce raw findings; this audit interprets them. Native posture tools flag issues but do not score ransomware-resistance, do not validate restore-test evidence, do not model cross-engine privilege escalation, and do not produce a prioritised, copy-pasteable remediation backlog. A senior database-security engineer triages every finding, removes false positives, combines signals across AWS RDS Recommendations, Inspector, Trusted Advisor, Macie, Azure Defender, Purview, GCP SCC, DLP, Prowler, ScoutSuite, and Steampipe, and produces an action-ready plan rather than a 5,000-line raw report.
Do you align with PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2?
Yes. Every finding is mapped to specific controls in the CIS Database Benchmarks (per engine), PCI-DSS Requirements 3 (encryption) and 8 (authentication), HIPAA Security Rule §164.312 Technical Safeguards, GDPR Article 32 (security of processing), SOC 2 CC6 (logical access), and NIST 800-53 - so the report drops directly into your compliance evidence pack alongside your SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, or PCI audit.
Will the audit affect production or trigger DB alarms?
No. The audit is fully read-only against describe / list APIs at a controlled rate. We never connect to any database endpoint, run queries, take snapshots, or modify configuration. Where your CSPM / SIEM (Wiz, Orca, Prisma Cloud, Defender, Sentinel, Security Hub) might flag the read activity we can pre-coordinate with your detection team, but in practice the API calls look identical to a normal admin running aws rds describe-db-instances.
How long until we receive the report?
Typical turnaround is 1-2 business days from the moment read-only access is granted, plus a 45-minute live findings walkthrough at a time that suits your security, platform, and DBA leads. Larger estates with hundreds of database instances across multiple engines and clouds can take a little longer; we confirm the timeline as soon as we see the scope.
Register for Your Free Database Security & Backup Audit
Fill out the form below and our team will get back to you within 2 business days.
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