MariaDB Security at the Open Source Conference in Rome

At the 2016 Open Source Conference in Rome, held a few weeks ago, MariaDB was present along with many of the most relevant players in the Open Source community. This included the Italian Public Administration. They are required by law to give preference to free software and open source software. The goal of the Italian Open Source Observatory is to promote the use of open source software in Italian public administrations. They monitor and collect information on cases of open source adoption and best practices related to open technology usage within institutions.

Our focus at the conference this year was in particular on the new important MariaDB security features. They’re part of our open source offering starting with the release of MariaDB 10.1. It’s extremely important that these features are accessible to all MariaDB users. However, it’s very relevant for the Italian Public Administration since they collect, manage and share sensitive Italian citizen data. This data needs to be protected and secure from any kind of unauthorized access.

With MariaDB 10.1 Security Capabilities, the Italian Public Administration can access these database security features (e.g., firewalls, encryption and database activity logging) while still relying on an open source solution in compliance with Italian law.

Every organization is concerned about threats to its data and the consequences that such threats represent. Every citizen wants to be sure that his privacy is protected and private data (i.e., health, insurance, family and financial data) are safely managed, transferred and accessed. But it’s also important that all of the services provided by the Public Administration through their web portals are always accessible and that those web sites and their database are protected against attacks that aim to deny those services.

Protecting data through encryption is essential, but it’s also important to make every effort possible to prevent data from being accessed. MariaDB provides an excellent set of features to support all of the new requirements in terms of database authentication, like Single Sign On which is preferred in most enterprises.

Private and public companies—even though they may have different objectives—also need to secure their services whenever they are provided through the Internet. This can be handled by MariaDB through the firewall features provided with MariaDB MaxScale. It can prevent attacks which are derived from unauthorized access, as well as denial of service attacks and SQL Injections.

See also our Blog on MariaDB Database Security.