Database security 'IT's biggest problem'

David Litchfield, security guru and managing director of vulnerability assessment company NGS, told delegates at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas that "database attacks are out there and these data breaches show it. They just aren't noticed at the time."

He said such attacks "offer the biggest potential for fraudulent activity and damage to companies' reputations and customer confidence."

Litchfield pointed out that the large number of data breaches this year were proof of how bad the situation was.

He added that not only were vendors to blame for vulnerabilities within database products, but also that deployment problems also proved a headache with poorly configured databases and improper access permissions.

Other experts pointed out that many databases were left with default passwords on them that were easy to find on the internet.

"Organizations should audit the configuration and usage of databases by intelligently logging interactions with the database," said Dr. Steve Moyle, founder and CTO of Secerno. "Anyone setting up a database should strive for least privilege access always."