work-around for scheduling SA changes

[toddd]

We recently encountered an issue with managing SA passwords. We expected RPM to change the SA password on a given machine once said password was checked out and checked back in. RPM did not reach out to randomize that password. According to an email inquiry, this is a known occurence and is being addressed in future iterations.

That being said, the only work-around we can think of is to schedule a daily job to change a given group--in this case that would be the SA group. A group can have dozens, even hundreds of DB instances. Before we present this possible solution...

Is there a way to schedule a job which targets only the machines where a password was retrieved within a given group? Or an alternative work-around we have not considered?

[Chris]

You are correct that in current versions of RPM through version 3.05, checking-in the password for SQL accounts, specifically non-windows systems, will not trigger an automatic re-randomization as it would for Windows accounts.

This enhancement will be added in version 3.06 and will take into account all non-Windows accounts. Which is presently undergoing QA.

For now, your workaround to randomize passwords daily is a fine one and as long as the process is automated, a recommended normal practice - even for accounts which do automatically re-randomize.

Finally, the ability to manage default instances of SQL is also a limitation of RPM and will continue to be at least into the next version, 3.06. This item has, previous to your request, been slated into the near term product road map.

If you have any further questions, you may reply to this post or contact us directly at sales@liebsoft.com, or by phone at 800.829.6263.

Hope that helps,

[Chris]

As an update to the original request to automatically re-randomize SQL accounts following recovery of their password as well as deal with named instances of SQL, it was originally stated that RPM 3.06 would handle these updates.

In fact, rather than releasing RPM 3.06, RPM version 4.01 was released instead which does include these two feature enhancements and much much more such as support for Oracle, MySQL, RSA SecureID, and Hardware Encryption to name a few.

Please download and examine Random Password Manager version 4.01.