Securing SQL Azure

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

In this brief 10 minute video, I will demonstrate how to use the security features in SQL Azure to control access to your cloud database.  This walkthrough shows how to create a secure connection to a database server, how to manage SQL Azure database settings on the firewall, and how to create and map users and logins to control authentication and authorization.

One of the strengths of SQL Azure is that it provides encrypted SSL communications between the cloud database and the running application. It doesn't matter whether it is running on Windows Azure, on-premises, or with a hosting service. All communications between the SQL Azure Database and the application utilize encryption (SSL) at all times.

Firewall rules prevent only specific IP addresses or IP-address ranges to access a SQL Azure database. Like SQL Server, users and logins can be mapped to a specific database or server-level roles which can provide complete control, restrict a user to just read-only access of a database, or no access at all.

I will walk you through a straightforward example here, which really shows the benefits of SQL Azure. After checking out this video, visit Sqlazure.com for more information and for additional resources. There's also database scripts and code you can download on Codeplex to follow along and re-create this example.

If you want to view it in full-screen mode, go here and click on the full-screen icon in the lower right-hand corner of the playback window.

We've got several other tutorials on the SQL Azure Codeplex site , go to https://sqlazure.codeplex.com.  Other walk-throughs and samples there include ones on how to secure a SQL Azure database, programming .NET with SQL Azure, and several others.

If you haven't started experimenting with SQL Azure, for a limited time, new customers to SQL Azure get a 1GB Web Edition Database for no charge and no commitment for 90 days.  This is a great way to try SQL Azure and the Windows Azure platform without any of the risk.  Check it out here