Announcing the General Availability of SQL Compliance Manager 5.9

by Apr 20, 2022

We are excited to announce the release of SQL Compliance Manager 5.9

SQL Compliance Manager is the industry leading SQL Server auditing solution that dramatically lowers the cost for companies to maintain database compliance standards and confidently prepares for compliance audits. With single button selections, SQL Compliance Manager configures SQL Servers to capture the data required for compliance with regulatory standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, CIS, SOX, DISA/STIG, NERC and FERPA. That data is efficiently and securely stored in the Compliance Manager Repository and audit reports are provided to demonstrate the resulting compliance status. A flexible system of alerting rules allow alerts to be generated across a broad range of significant, suspicious or undesired activities.

What’s New in SQL Compliance Manager 5.9?

The SQL Compliance Manager 5.9 release is focused on providing significant performance and scalability improvements, added quality and an enhanced user experience with cost benefits for both small and large customer installations.

Register now for our upcoming session on ‘What Is New’ democast for SQL Compliance Manager 5.9 and see all of the new features in action! Register here!

Product Enhancements

Parallel Processing Mechanism

SQL Compliance Manager’s enhanced processing mechanisms allow the processing of multiple event capture files concurrently. This processing enhancement provides performance and scalability improvements while lowering the cost of audit on the monitored systems. We expect that this change will improve the trial experience as well as benefiting established SQL Compliance Manager users.

Enhanced Index Structure for the Compliance Manager Repository

This release introduces an optimized index format resulting in greatly increased performance for SQL Compliance Manager Console operations and reporting.

Auditing

Streamlined workflows and added resiliency to the Before-and-After Data and DML activity event capture mechanisms in order to add quality and enhance the overall user experience.

Console Performance Consistency

This release addressed areas causing poor performance in the SQL Compliance Manager Console with significant success by eliminating numerous areas where SQL Compliance Manager Console had long delays.

‘Auditing Activities’ and ‘Privileged Users’ Configuration

Added functionality refinement to the ‘Auditing Activities’ and ‘Privileged Users’ configuration by allowing fully independent customization of the audit settings at the database-level and the server-level configurations. These changes provide a significant usability enhancement for SQL Compliance Manager users with complex configurations and lower the performance and event collection impact on monitored instances.

Alert Rules Timeframe Configuration

Administrators can now choose to specify alerts to be generated and sent to designated email addresses for certain rules and on various time-frames. This change significantly improves usability and flexibility while saving users a considerable amount of time in their day to day operational tasks and efforts.

End of Life and Extended Support for Windows Server 2008/2008 R2

Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 have both met their end-of-life and the extended support by Microsoft on July 9, 2019. End-of-life and extended support means the end of regular security updates for any product from Microsoft. Accordingly, SQL Compliance Manager 5.9 no longer supports Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008/2008 R2. The 2008 products were outstanding for their time, however, we highly recommend upgrading to the most current versions for better performance, efficiency, and regular security updates for your testing and production environments.

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