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Security in Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server

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APPLIES TO: Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server

Multiple layers of security are available to help protect the data on your Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server instance. This article outlines those security options.

As organizations increasingly rely on data stored in databases to drive critical decision-making activities that drive competitive advantage, the need for solid database security measures has never been more important. A security lapse can trigger catastrophic consequences, including exposing confidential data, causing reputational damage to organization.

Information protection and encryption

Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server encrypts data in two ways:

  • Data in transit: Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server encrypts in-transit data with Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS). Encryption is enforced by default. For more detailed information on connection security with SSL\TLS, see this documentation. For better security, you might choose to enable SCRAM authentication in Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server.

    Although it is not recommended, if needed, due to legacy client incompatibility, you have an option to allow both TLS\SSL and non-TLS/SSL connections to Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server by updating the require_secure_transport server parameter to OFF. You can also set the TLS version by setting ssl_max_protocol_version server parameters.

  • Data at rest: For storage encryption, Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server uses the FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic module. Data is encrypted on disk, including backups and the temporary files created while queries are running.

    The service uses Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) mode with AES 256-bit cipher included in Azure storage encryption, and the keys are system managed. This is similar to other at-rest encryption technologies, like transparent data encryption in SQL Server or Oracle databases. Storage encryption is always on and can't be disabled.

Network security

When you're running Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server, you have two main networking options:

  • Private access: You can deploy your server into an Azure virtual network. Azure virtual networks help provide private and secure network communication. Resources in a virtual network can communicate through private IP addresses. For more information, see the networking overview for Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server.

    Security rules in network security groups enable you to filter the type of network traffic that can flow in and out of virtual network subnets and network interfaces. For more information, see the overview of network security groups.

  • Public access: The server can be accessed through a public endpoint. The public endpoint is a publicly resolvable DNS address. Access to it's secured through a firewall that blocks all connections by default.

    IP firewall rules grant access to servers based on the originating IP address of each request. For more information, see the overview of firewall rules.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud support

Microsoft Defender for open-source relational databases detects anomalous activities indicating unusual and potentially harmful attempts to access or exploit databases. Defender for Cloud provides security alerts on anomalous activities so that you can detect potential threats and respond to them as they occur. When you enable this plan, Defender for Cloud provides alerts when it detects anomalous database access and query patterns and suspicious database activities.

These alerts appear in Defender for Cloud's security alerts page and include:

  • Details of the suspicious activity that triggered them
  • The associated MITRE ATT&CK tactic
  • Recommended actions for how to investigate and mitigate the threat
  • Options for continuing your investigations with Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Brute Force Attacks

A brute force attack is among the most common and fairly successful hacking methods, despite being least sophisticated hacking methods. The theory behind such an attack is that if you take an infinite number of attempts to guess a password, you're bound to be right eventually. When Microsoft Defender for Cloud detects a brute force attack, it triggers an alert to bring you awareness that a brute force attack took place. It also can separate simple brute force attack from brute force attack on a valid user or a successful brute force attack.

To get alerts from the Microsoft Defender plan, you'll first need to enable it as shown in the next section.

Enable enhanced security with Microsoft Defender for Cloud

  1. From the Azure portal, navigate to Security menu in the left pane
  2. Pick Microsoft Defender for Cloud
  3. Select Enable in the right pane.

Screenshot of Azure portal showing how to enable Cloud Defender.

Note

If you have the "open-source relational databases" feature enabled in your Microsoft Defender plan, you will observe that Microsoft Defender is automatically enabled by default for your Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server resource.

Access management

The best way to manage Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server database access permissions at scale is using the concept of roles. A role can be either a database user or a group of database users. Roles can own the database objects and assign privileges on those objects to other roles to control who has access to which objects. It's also possible to grant membership in a role to another role, thus allowing the member role to use privileges assigned to another role. Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server lets you grant permissions directly to the database users. As a good security practice, it can be recommended that you create roles with specific sets of permissions based on minimum application and access requirements. You can then assign the appropriate roles to each user. Roles are used to enforce a least privilege model for accessing database objects.

The Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server instance is created with the three default roles defined, in addition to built-in roles PostgreSQL creates. You can see these roles by running the command:

SELECT rolname FROM pg_roles;

The roles are listed below:

  • azure_pg_admin
  • azuresu
  • administrator role

While you're creating the Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server instance, you provide credentials for an administrator role. This administrator role can be used to create more PostgreSQL roles.

For example, below we can create an example user/role called 'demouser'


 CREATE USER demouser PASSWORD password123;

The administrator role should never be used by the application.

In cloud-based PaaS environments access to an Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server superuser account is restricted to control plane operations only by cloud operators. Therefore, the azure_pg_admin account exists as a pseudo-superuser account. Your administrator role is a member of the azure_pg_admin role.
However, the server admin account isn't part of the azuresu role, which has superuser privileges and is used to perform control plane operations. Since this service is a managed PaaS service, only Microsoft is part of the superuser role.

You can periodically audit the list of roles in your server. For example, you can connect using psql client and query the pg_roles table, which lists all the roles along with privileges such as create other roles, create databases, replication etc.


select * from pg_roles where rolname='demouser';
-[ RECORD 1 ]--+---------
rolname        | demouser
rolsuper       | f
rolinherit     | t
rolcreaterole  | f
rolcreatedb    | f
rolcanlogin    | f
rolreplication | f
rolconnlimit   | -1
rolpassword    | ********
rolvaliduntil  |
rolbypassrls   | f
rolconfig      |
oid            | 24827

Important

Recently, the ability to create CAST commands was enabled in Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server. To run the CREATE CAST statement, the user must be a member of the azure_pg_admin group. Please be aware that it is not currently possible to drop a CAST once it has been created.

Audit logging in Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server is also available with Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server to track activity in your databases.

Control schema access

Newly created databases in Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server have a default set of privileges in the database's public schema that allow all database users and roles to create objects. To better limit application user access to the databases that you create on your Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server instance, we recommend that you consider revoking these default public privileges. After doing so, you can then grant specific privileges for database users on a more granular basis. For example:

  • To prevent application database users from creating objects in the public schema, revoke create privileges to public schema from public role.

    REVOKE CREATE ON SCHEMA public FROM PUBLIC;

  • Next, create new database.

    CREATE DATABASE Test_db;

  • Revoke all privileges from the PUBLIC schema on this new database.

    REVOKE ALL ON DATABASE Test_db FROM PUBLIC;

  • Create custom role for application db users

    CREATE ROLE Test_db_user;

  • Give database users with this role the ability to connect to the database.

    GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE Test_db TO Test_db_user;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE Test_db TO Test_db_user;

  • Create database user

    CREATE USER user1 PASSWORD 'Password_to_change'

  • Assign role, with its connect and select privileges to user

    GRANT Test_db_user TO user1;

In this example, user user1 can connect and has all privileges in our test database Test_db, but not any other db on the server. It would be recommended further, instead of giving this user\role ALL PRIVILEGES on that database and its objects, to provide more selective permissions, such as SELECT,INSERT,EXECUTE, etc. For more information about privileges in PostgreSQL databases, see the GRANT and REVOKE commands in the PostgreSQL docs.

Public schema ownership changes in PostgreSQL 15

From Postgres version 15, ownership of the public schema has been changed to the new pg_database_owner role. It enables every database owner to own the database’s public schema.
More information can be found in PostgreSQL release notes.

PostgreSQL 16 changes with role based security

In PostgreSQL database role can have many attributes that define its privileges.One such attribute is the CREATEROLE attribute, which is important to PostgreSQL database management of users and roles. In PostgreSQL 16 significant changes were introduced to this attribute. In PostgreSQL 16, users with CREATEROLE attribute no longer have the ability to hand out membership in any role to anyone; instead, like other users, without this attribute, they can only hand out memberships in roles for which they possess ADMIN OPTION. Also, in PostgreSQL 16, the CREATEROLE attribute still allows a nonsuperuser the ability to provision new users, however they can only drop users that they themselves created. Attempts to drop users, which isn't create by user with CREATEROLE attribute, will result in an error.

PostgreSQL 16 also introduced new and improved built-in roles. New pg_use_reserved_connections role in PostgreSQL 16 allows the use of connection slots reserved via reserved_connections.The pg_create_subscription role allows superusers to create subscriptions.

Important

Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server does not allow users to be granted pg_write_all_data attribute, which allows user to write all data (tables, views, sequences), as if having INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE rights on those objects, and USAGE rights on all schemas, even without having it explicitly granted. As a workaround recommended to grant similar permissions on a more finite level per database and object.

Row level security

Row level security (RLS) is an Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server security feature that allows database administrators to define policies to control how specific rows of data display and operate for one or more roles. Row level security is an additional filter you can apply to an Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server database table. When a user tries to perform an action on a table, this filter is applied before the query criteria or other filtering, and the data is narrowed or rejected according to your security policy. You can create row level security policies for specific commands like SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE, specify it for ALL commands. Use cases for row level security include PCI compliant implementations, classified environments, and shared hosting / multitenant applications.

Only users with SET ROW SECURITY rights might apply row security rights to a table. The table owner might set row security on a table. Like OVERRIDE ROW SECURITY this is currently an implicit right. Row-level security doesn't override existing GRANT permissions, it adds a finer grained level of control. For example, setting ROW SECURITY FOR SELECT to allow a given user to give rows would only give that user access if the user also has SELECT privileges on the column or table in question.

Here's an example showing how to create a policy that ensures only members of the custom created "manager" role can access only the rows for a specific account. The code in the following example was shared in the PostgreSQL documentation.

CREATE TABLE accounts (manager text, company text, contact_email text);

ALTER TABLE accounts ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY;

CREATE POLICY account_managers ON accounts TO managers
    USING (manager = current_user);

The USING clause implicitly adds a WITH CHECK clause, ensuring that members of the manager role can't perform SELECT, DELETE, or UPDATE operations on rows that belong to other managers, and can't INSERT new rows belonging to another manager. You can drop a row security policy by using DROP POLICY command, as in his example:



DROP POLICY account_managers ON accounts;

Although you may have dropped the policy, role manager is still not able to view any data that belong to any other manager. This is because the row-level security policy is still enabled on the accounts table. If row-level security is enabled by default, PostgreSQL uses a default-deny policy. You can disable row level security, as in example below:

ALTER TABLE accounts DISABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY;

Bypassing Row Level Security

PostgreSQL has BYPASSRLS and NOBYPASSRLS permissions, which can be assigned to a role; NOBYPASSRLS is assigned by default. With newly provisioned servers in Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server bypassing row level security privilege (BYPASSRLS) is implemented as follows:

  • For Postgres 16 and above versioned servers we follow standard PostgreSQL 16 behavior. Nonadministrative users created by azure_pg_admin administrator role allows you to create roles with BYPASSRLS attribute\privilege as necessary.
  • For Postgres 15 and below versioned servers. , you can use azure_pg_admin user to do administrative tasks that require BYPASSRLS privilege, but can't create nonadmin users with BypassRLS privilege, since administrator role has no superuser privileges, as common in cloud based PaaS PostgreSQL services.

Update passwords

For better security, it's a good practice to periodically rotate your admin password and database users passwords. It's recommended to use strong passwords using upper and lower cases, numbers, and special characters.

Use SCRAM

The Salted Challenge Response Authentication Mechanism (SCRAM) greatly improves the security of password-based user authentication by adding several key security features that prevent rainbow-table attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, and stored password attacks, while also adding support for multiple hashing algorithms and passwords that contain non-ASCII characters.

In SCRAM authentication, the client participates in doing the encryption work in order to produce the proof of identity. SCRAM authentication therefore offloads some of the computation cost to its clients, which in most cases are application servers. Adopting SCRAM, in addition to stronger hash algorithm, therefore offers also protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against PostgreSQL, by preventing a CPU overload of the server to compute password hashes.

If your client driver supports SCRAM , you can setup access to Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server using SCRAM as scram-sha-256 vs. default md5.

Reset administrator password

Follow the how to guide to reset the admin password.

Update database user password

You can use client tools to update database user passwords.
For example,

ALTER ROLE demouser PASSWORD 'Password123!';
ALTER ROLE

Azure Policy Support

Azure Policy helps to enforce organizational standards and to assess compliance at-scale. Through its compliance dashboard, it provides an aggregated view to evaluate the overall state of the environment, with the ability to drill down to the per-resource, per-policy granularity. It also helps to bring your resources to compliance through bulk remediation for existing resources and automatic remediation for new resources.

Built-in Policy Definitions

Built-in policies are developed and tested by Microsoft, ensuring they meet common standards and best practices, an be deployed quickly without the need for additional configuration, making them ideal for standard compliance requirements. Built-in policies often cover widely recognized standards and compliance frameworks.

The section below provides an index of Azure Policy built-in policy definitions for Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server. Use the link in the Source column to view the source on the Azure Policy GitHub repo.

Name (Azure Portal) Description Effect(s) Version(GitHub)
A Microsoft Entra administrator should be provisioned for PostgreSQL flexible servers Audit provisioning of a Microsoft Entra administrator for your PostgreSQL flexible server to enable Microsoft Entra authentication. Microsoft Entra authentication enables simplified permission management and centralized identity management of database users and other Microsoft services AuditIfNotExists, Disabled 1.0.0
Auditing with PgAudit should be enabled for PostgreSQL flexible servers This policy helps audit any PostgreSQL flexible servers in your environment, which isn't enabled to use pgaudit. AuditIfNotExists, Disabled 1.0.0
Connection throttling should be enabled for PostgreSQL flexible servers This policy helps audit any PostgreSQL flexible servers in your environment without Connection throttling enabled. This setting enables temporary connection throttling per IP for too many invalid password login failures AuditIfNotExists, Disabled 1.0.0
Deploy Diagnostic Settings for PostgreSQL flexible servers to Log Analytics workspace Deploys the diagnostic settings for PostgreSQL flexible servers to stream to a regional Log Analytics workspace when any PostgreSQL flexible servers, which is missing this diagnostic setting is created or updated DeployIfNotExists, Disabled 1.0.0
Disconnections should be logged for PostgreSQL flexible servers This policy helps audit any PostgreSQL flexible servers in your environment without log_disconnections enabled AuditIfNotExists, Disabled 1.0.0
Enforce SSL connection should be enabled for PostgreSQL flexible servers Azure Database for PostgreSQL supports connecting your Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server to client applications using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Enforcing SSL connections between your database flexible server and your client applications helps protect against 'man in the middle' attacks by encrypting the data stream between the server and your application. This configuration enforces that SSL is always enabled for accessing your PostgreSQL flexible server AuditIfNotExists, Disabled 1.0.0
Geo-redundant backup should be enabled for Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible servers Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible servers allows you to choose the redundancy option for your database server. It can be set to a geo-redundant backup storage in which the data is not only stored within the region in which your server is hosted, but is also replicated to a paired region to provide recovery option in case of a region failure. Configuring geo-redundant storage for backup is only allowed during server create Audit, Disabled 1.0.0
Log checkpoints should be enabled for PostgreSQL flexible servers This policy helps audit any PostgreSQL flexible servers in your environment without log_checkpoints setting enabled AuditIfNotExists, Disabled 1.0.0
Log connections should be enabled for PostgreSQL flexible servers This policy helps audit any PostgreSQL flexible servers in your environment without log_connections setting enabled AuditIfNotExists, Disabled 1.0.0
PostgreSQL FlexIble servers should use customer-managed keys to encrypt data at rest Use customer-managed keys to manage the encryption at rest of your PostgreSQL flexible servers. By default, the data is encrypted at rest with service-managed keys, but customer-managed keys are commonly required to meet regulatory compliance standards. Customer-managed keys enable the data to be encrypted with an Azure Key Vault key created and owned by you. You have full control and responsibility for the key lifecycle, including rotation and management Audit, Deny, Disabled 1.0.0
PostgreSQL flexible servers should be running TLS version 1.2 or newer This policy helps audit any PostgreSQL flexible servers in your environment, which is running with TLS version less than 1.2 AuditIfNotExists, Disabled 1.0.0
Private endpoint should be enabled for PostgreSQL flexible servers Private endpoint connections enforce secure communication by enabling private connectivity to Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Configure a private endpoint connection to enable access to traffic coming only from known networks and prevent access from all other IP addresses, including within Azure AuditIfNotExists, Disabled 1.0.0

Custom Policy Definitions

Custom policies can be precisely tailored to match the specific requirements of your organization, including unique security policies or compliance mandates. With custom policies you have complete control over the policy logic and parameters, allowing for sophisticated and fine-grained policy definitions.

Share your suggestions and bugs with the Azure Database for PostgreSQL product team.

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