Summary

The goal of this chapter is to introduce you to the security enhancements in SQL Server 2005. The SQL Server 2005 team has done everything possible to ensure that this release provides the most secure and robust environment possible to build database applications. Following the Trustworthy Computing initiative, SQL Server 2005 is secure by design, secure by default, and secure in deployment.

SQL Server 2005 contains significant enhancements to authentication, authorization, metadata access, and auditing schemes. This chapter also discusses the built-in cryptography support that you can use to easily encrypt and decrypt data and secure the keys used for encryption. SQL Server 2005 provides tools and technologies that can be used to protect the SQL Server environment by disabling unused features, protocols, and services and thereby reducing the attackable surface area.

The final section in this chapter briefly discusses security initiatives in various SQL Server 2005 subsystems, such as Service Broker and .NET CLR integration. Chapter 8 discusses the new reliability and high availability features introduced in SQL Server 2005.