A question for education purposes. Historically, MS SQL DBAs are resistant to RBAC strategies involving integration with Active Directory (AD). In other words, controlling permissions to DBs via a AD role based access control groups is met with considerable resistance by DBAs. And some legacy application owners, to be fair.
Why?
Some context: Microsoft released a video in 2011 during TechDays outlining an RBAC strategy that has worked in previous organizations, both small and large. Very popular video. Once decided that is the strategy, getting that philosophy into practice has not been easy. It usually starts with the on staff seasoned IT pros looking at RBAC with suspicious and doubtful eyes. “I’ve never done it this way” and “I doubt this will make our jobs any easier”.
Nevertheless, once the concept takes hold RBAC begins to see fulfillment. Foremost adding predetermined resources to roles accelerates onboarding, easier to audit resources, and scales elegantly as we grow as roles are the focus. Typically, architects and server teams get on board first. A standard is born and acceleration begins to be felt, including shifting left where DBAs are doing less security permissions requests as those are now handled by the helpdesk. In the meantime, slowly and begrudgingly, outliers come on slowly as this strategy does shift stances from caring for the security of their apps like pets to managing access to resources by role.
I posit these reasons, given to me as why DBAs (or application owners) want to go it alone:
5. Microsoft isn’t always right. “There is more than one way to do it and the “video” isn’t applicable to SQL”.
4. The amount of work to shift to resource-based groups. “Lots of groups.”
3. The complexity. “Easier to troubleshoot when I own the DB or application’s security intimately.”
2. Fear what they don’t understand. “I’ve never done security permissions like this, so it must be wrong.”
1. Territorial control. “Don’t touch my DBs”. Uncomfortable shifting left.
This is very much a pets vs. cattle conversation. I acknowledge and appreciate SQL must be tweaked and tuned to operate at it’s best performance. However, I disagree that treating ‘access control to resources’ like pets accelerates IT service delivery, provides uniformed information security governance, and ultimately is healthy for the organization. Especially as organizations’ scale.
What is your opinion?
\\ JMM
PS. More and more companies are using automated access control oversight tools such as Sailpoint. And at a previous company, guess who fought the hardest against that move? DBAs… Why?
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