Being in the computer industry is one of the most challenging things anyone can get into. When upgrading one’s knowledge to keep the data secure, there are many hurdles to cross. In this industry, where we look for quick, fast responses from development to deployment to sales, everyone is expected to deliver without compromising any of the business parameters. As we chase around the strict deadlines for delivery, the team tries to take shortcuts. That, for most cases, involves cutting corners and compromising on designing for secure systems. That is a concern for many organizations. Database administrators love to build a secure system to deploy applications delivered from the Application team.

This whitepaper gets back to the basics of security. It covers some of the fundamental building blocks that were added with SQL Server since the 2005 version that is worth noting till today in SQL Server 2019. It presents principals, logins and users, password policy troubleshooting, and the special user sysadmin.