Part of what defines a modern cloud engineer’s role is privacy concerns. Between the GDPR and the various US states’ attempts to govern PII, it has become more and more important that we understand how to secure data. In this hands-on lab, students will employ one of the most important and common data at rest protection mechanisms — Always Encrypted SQL data. We will build a SQL server and populate a database with sample data. Then, we’ll connect and encrypt a targeted portion of that data.
Learning Objectives
Successfully complete this lab by achieving the following learning objectives:
- Use RDP to Connect to the Virtual Machine and Install SQL Server Management Studio
Use the Remote Desktop client (available from Microsoft for Windows clients natively and Mac clients here).
- Connect to the server via RDP, logging in with the provided lab credentials.
- Browse to this link and download SSMS.
- Connect to the SQL Server
- In the Azure portal, click the provisioned SQL server to open it.
- In Overview, copy the server name to the clipboard.
- Connect to the SQL server using the following values, replacing <SERVER_NAME> with your unique name copied from Azure:
- Server type: Database Engine
- Server name: <SERVER_NAME> (example: 5x4a345oyk6ya.database.windows.net)
- Authentication: SQL Server Authentication
- Login: acguser
- Password: <SERVER_NAME>! (example: 5x4a345oyk6ya!)
- Create an Azure Key Vault
In the Azure portal, create an Azure vault using the following values:
- Resource group: Existing resource group
- Key vault name: samplevault491512
- Region: Region where the resource group is located
- Leave the rest as their defaults and click Next: Access policy.
- In Key Permissions, ensure the following operations are not selected for the logged-in lab user:
Purge, Release, Rotate, Get Rotation Policy, and Set Rotation Policy - Click Review + create > Create.
- Encrypt Some Data
- Return to the Remote Desktop client.
- In Object Explorer to the left, click Databases > SampleDB > Tables > SalesLT.Customer.
- Right-click on SalesLT.Customer and click Encrypt Columns.
- Click Next.
- In Column Selection, select FirstName, MiddleName, and LastName.
- In Encryption Type, select Deterministic for all three columns.
- Click Next.
- In Master Key Configuration, select Azure Key Vault and click Sign In.
- Sign in using the provided lab credentials.
- Click Next > Next > Finish.
- Sign in to the Azure account again.
