How Do I Know If My Database Is Being Attacked Right Now?

Database attacks aren't something most business owners think about until its too late—and by then, the damage is already done. I've worked with clients across fintech, healthcare, and e-commerce who've learned this lesson the hard way; one minute everything seems fine, the next minute they're dealing with compromised customer data or a completely locked system. The thing is, database attacks happen more often than you'd think, and they're getting more sophisticated every day. What used to be obvious intrusions are now subtle, slow-moving threats that can go unnoticed for weeks or even months.

Here's the thing—most people assume they'll know immediately if their database is under attack. They picture some dramatic scene with alarms going off and red warnings flashing on screens. But real database attacks? They're usually much quieter than that. Attackers want to stay hidden for as long as possible, slowly extracting data or planting backdoors they can exploit later. By the time you notice something's wrong, they've already been inside your system for ages.

The average time it takes to detect a database breach is 207 days, which means attackers have over six months to access, copy, and manipulate your data before anyone even realises something is wrong.

I mean, that's genuinely terrifying when you think about it. But here's where it gets interesting—there are clear signs that your database is being attacked right now, and with proper database monitoring and threat detection in place, you don't have to wait 207 days to find out. You can spot these attacks in real-time, respond quickly, and protect your data before serious damage occurs. That's exactly what this guide is about: giving you the knowledge and tools to identify database attacks as they're happening, not months after the fact.

Understanding Database Attacks and Why They Happen

Right, lets talk about why databases get attacked in the first place—because understanding the why helps you spot the how much faster. I've worked on apps handling everything from patient medical records to financial transactions, and one thing stays constant; databases are valuable targets because thats where all the good stuff lives. Your users personal information, payment details, business secrets...its all sitting there.

Here's the thing—attackers aren't always after your data to sell it on some dark web marketplace (though that definitely happens). Sometimes they want to lock you out of your own database and demand ransom. Sometimes its about disrupting your service to hurt your reputation. And sometimes? They're just looking for a weak point to get deeper into your system, using your database as a stepping stone to something bigger.

The methods they use vary quite a bit. SQL injection is still massive—basically tricking your database into running commands it shouldn't by exploiting poorly written code. Then you've got brute force attacks where they're just hammering away at your login systems trying thousands of password combinations. Distributed denial of service attacks can overwhelm your database with requests until it collapses under the load. And don't even get me started on insider threats; disgruntled employees or contractors with legitimate access who decide to cause damage.

What makes databases particularly vulnerable is that they need to be accessible to function properly. Your app needs to query it constantly, your backend systems need to write to it, maybe you've got analytics tools pulling data...each connection point is a potential entry for someone with bad intentions. Its a bit mad really—the very thing that makes databases useful also makes them exposed.

Common Signs Your Database Might Be Under Attack

Right, so you've got a database running and you're worried about security threats—good, because that means you're actually paying attention. The tricky bit is that database attacks don't usually announce themselves with flashing lights and sirens; instead they show up as subtle changes in behaviour that are easy to miss if you're not looking for them.

The most obvious sign? Sudden spikes in database queries. I mean, if your database normally handles a few hundred requests per minute and suddenly its dealing with thousands, something's not right. This could be someone trying to extract data through automated queries or testing different attack vectors. Your server logs will show these patterns—you just need to actually look at them regularly.

Slower performance is another red flag that people often dismiss as "just one of those things". But here's the thing—databases don't randomly slow down for no reason. If queries that usually take milliseconds are suddenly taking seconds, thats worth investigating. Attackers often run resource-intensive queries to either crash your system or hide their real activities in the noise.

Watch out for failed login attempts too. A few failed logins? That's normal—people forget passwords. But dozens or hundreds of failed attempts from the same IP address or targeting the same admin account? Thats a brute force attack in progress, no question about it.

Set up automated alerts for unusual patterns rather than trying to monitor everything manually—your monitoring tools should work harder than you do, not the other way around.

You might also notice strange new user accounts appearing in your database or changes to existing user permissions. Attackers who gain access often create backdoor accounts so they can return later. Regular audits of your user list and permission settings can catch these before they become serious problems.

Setting Up Basic Database Monitoring

Right, so you've decided you need to keep an eye on your database—good call, really. But here's the thing, setting up monitoring doesn't have to be this massive technical undertaking that takes weeks. I mean, you can start with some pretty basic stuff that'll give you a solid foundation, and then build from there as you get more comfortable.

The first thing you need to do is enable your database's built-in logging. Every major database system (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, whatever you're using) comes with logging capabilities that are often turned off by default. Why? Because logging takes up space and can slow things down a tiny bit—but honestly, its worth it for the security benefits. You want to log failed login attempts, queries that take unusually long to execute, and any changes to user permissions. These are your early warning signs.

What You Should Monitor First

Start with these basics and you'll catch most problems before they become serious issues:

• Failed authentication attempts (more than 3-5 in a short period is suspicious)
• Query execution times (sudden spikes often mean somethings wrong)
• Connection counts (a massive jump could indicate an attack)
• Database error rates (errors should be rare, not constant)
• Data export volumes (someone downloading your entire user table at 3am? Yeah, that's not normal)

Choosing Your Monitoring Tools

You don't need expensive enterprise software to start. Actually, many free and open-source tools will do the job perfectly well for most apps. Tools like Prometheus, Grafana, or even your hosting provider's built-in monitoring dashboards can give you real visibility into whats happening. The key is setting them up to actually alert you when something goes wrong—a dashboard nobody looks at is basically useless, isn't it?

Set up alerts that go to your phone or email. Make sure they're specific enough to be useful but not so sensitive that you get woken up every night for nothing. Finding that balance takes time, but start conservative and adjust as you learn whats normal for your database.

Real-Time Security Alerts That Actually Work

Setting up security alerts is one thing—getting alerts that actually help you is another thing entirely. I've seen too many systems that bombard teams with hundreds of notifications every day, most of them false positives or issues that don't really matter. And you know what happens then? People start ignoring them. Every single one. That's the worst possible outcome because when a real attack does happen, nobody notices until its too late.

The key to proper real-time database security is understanding what deserves your immediate attention and what can wait. Not every unusual activity is an attack; sometimes it's just your marketing team running an unexpected report or a developer testing something in production (which they shouldn't be doing, but that's a different conversation!). Your alert system needs to be smart enough to know the difference—or at least give you enough context to decide quickly.

What Makes a Security Alert Actually Useful

A good alert tells you three things straight away: what happened, why it matters, and what you should probably do about it. Something like "High number of failed login attempts from IP 185.220.101.45" is infinitely more helpful than just "Database alert triggered". The first one tells you exactly whats going on; the second one just makes you panic and start digging through logs to figure out what's wrong.

The best security alerts are the ones that give you enough information to act immediately without needing to investigate further first

I always recommend setting up tiered alerts based on severity. Critical alerts—like someone trying to export your entire user table or delete records—should wake you up at 3am if needed. Medium alerts might be multiple failed authentication attempts or someone accessing sensitive tables they don't normally touch. Low priority alerts could be things like unusual query patterns that deserve a look but aren't emergencies. This way you're not treating everything like a five-alarm fire when some things are just... well, a bit smoky.

Configuring Alerts That Don't Drive You Mad

Most database monitoring tools let you set thresholds for what triggers an alert. The trick is finding that sweet spot where you catch genuine threats without creating alert fatigue. Start conservative—set your thresholds quite high—then gradually make them more sensitive as you learn what normal looks like for your specific database. Your normal might be completely different from another company's normal, and that's fine.

For intrusion detection specifically, focus your alerts on these patterns: repeated failed authentication attempts (more than 5 in a minute is suspicious), access from unexpected geographic locations, queries that return massive amounts of data all at once, any DROP or TRUNCATE commands outside of maintenance windows, and connections from IP addresses you don't recognise. These are the bread and butter signals that something dodgy is happening—sure, they might occasionally be legitimate, but they're worth checking every single time.

One thing I've learned over the years is that your alert system should also tell you when things go quiet. If your database suddenly stops logging certain types of activity, that could mean someone's tampered with your monitoring itself. It sounds paranoid but honestly? Its happened more times than you'd think. Attackers who know what they're doing will try to disable your threat detection before they start stealing data.

How to Spot Unusual Database Activity

Right, so you've got your monitoring set up and alerts coming through—but what actually counts as unusual? After building database systems for years, I can tell you its not always obvious. Sometimes an attack looks like normal traffic until you know what to look for.

The tricky part is that every database has its own normal behaviour. What's unusual for a healthcare app with steady daytime traffic is completely different from an e-commerce platform that spikes at weekends. You need to establish your baseline first, which means watching how your database behaves during regular operations—how many queries per minute, which tables get accessed most, what times are busiest. Once you know whats normal, spotting the weird stuff becomes much easier.

Key Patterns That Signal Trouble

Here's what I look for when reviewing database activity. These patterns have helped me catch problems before they became disasters:

• Query patterns that don't match user behaviour—like thousands of identical queries hitting your database at 3am when your users are asleep
• Sudden attempts to access tables that your app rarely touches, especially admin or config tables
• Failed login attempts that spike dramatically over a short period
• Database queries that take much longer than they should, which might indicate someone's trying to extract large amounts of data
• Unusual geographical access patterns—queries coming from countries where you have no users
• Sequential ID scanning where someone's clearly trying every possible value to see what data exists

The Human Element

Actually, one thing people forget is that not all unusual activity is malicious. Sometimes its a developer testing something in production (yeah, it happens!), or a marketing campaign that suddenly drives unexpected traffic. But you still need to investigate every anomaly because waiting to see if its an attack? That's a risk you really shouldn't take. When you spot something odd, check your team's activity first—saves a lot of panic and false alarms.

Tools and Methods for Threat Detection

Right, lets talk about the actual tools you need to protect your database—because monitoring manually is basically impossible once you're dealing with any real traffic. I've set up database security for all kinds of projects over the years, from small e-commerce apps to major healthcare platforms handling sensitive patient data, and the tooling has come a long way. But heres the thing; more tools doesn't always mean better security. You need the right combination that actually works for your setup.

Database monitoring tools fall into a few categories and knowing which ones you need depends on your threat model. First up, you've got your database activity monitoring (DAM) solutions—these sit between your application and database, watching every query that goes through. Tools like Imperva, IBM Guardium, or even open-source options like pgAudit for PostgreSQL can log every single database interaction. They're brilliant for spotting SQL injection attempts because they can recognise patterns that look suspicious; weird characters in queries, multiple failed authentication attempts, or queries trying to access tables they shouldnt.

Open-Source vs Commercial Solutions

I mean, you don't always need expensive enterprise software to get started. Open-source tools like OSSEC or Wazuh can monitor your database logs and alert you to suspicious activity—they're free and actually quite powerful if you take the time to configure them properly. The trade-off? They require more technical knowledge to set up. Commercial solutions like Datadog or Splunk come with pre-built dashboards and easier setup, but they'll cost you monthly. For most mobile apps connecting to databases, I usually recommend starting with your cloud providers built-in monitoring (AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Operations) because its already integrated and covers the basics.

Setting Up Intrusion Detection Systems

Network-based intrusion detection systems (IDS) like Snort or Suricata can watch the traffic flowing to your database server and spot attack patterns. These work differently than DAM tools—they're looking at network packets rather than database queries themselves. Its a bit mad really, but you want both layers of protection; one watching the network traffic and another watching what actually happens inside the database. Together they give you much better coverage than either alone.

The real magic happens when you connect all these tools together. Modern SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) platforms can aggregate logs from your database, your application servers, your network IDS, and your firewall—then correlate events across all of them to spot coordinated attacks. Sure, setting this up takes time, but once its running you can see patterns you'd never spot looking at individual logs.

Start simple with your cloud provider's native monitoring tools and add complexity as you grow; its better to have basic monitoring that you actually understand than sophisticated tools you never configure properly.

One mistake I see constantly is people installing monitoring tools but never actually looking at the alerts. You know what? If you're getting 500 alerts a day, you're going to ignore all of them—that's just human nature. Focus on tuning your thresholds so you only get alerted about things that genuinely matter. Better to get five real alerts than fifty false positives that train you to ignore everything.

Here are the must-have detection methods I recommend for any production database:

• Real-time query monitoring that flags unusual SQL patterns or injection attempts
• Failed login attempt tracking with automatic IP blocking after repeated failures
• Baseline performance monitoring so you can spot when query volume suddenly spikes
• File integrity monitoring that alerts you if database configuration files change
• Privilege escalation detection that watches for users suddenly accessing data they normally dont
• Data exfiltration monitoring that flags large unexpected data exports

The combination of automated tools with human oversight is what actually works in practice—machines are brilliant at processing huge amounts of log data, but humans are still better at understanding context and deciding whether something is genuinely malicious or just a developer doing something unusual at 2am. Building that balance into your threat detection approach will save you a lot of headaches down the line.

What to Do When You Detect an Attack

Right, so you've spotted something dodgy happening to your database—what now? First thing: don't panic. I know that's easier said than done when you're staring at unusual activity on your monitoring dashboard, but clear thinking is your biggest asset in these first few minutes.

Your immediate priority is containment. If your monitoring tools are showing an active attack, you need to limit the damage whilst you figure out whats actually happening. This might mean temporarily taking your database offline or blocking specific IP addresses that are hammering your system. Yes, taking things offline can affect your users—but its better than letting an attacker walk away with your entire customer database, right?

Document Everything You See

Before you start making changes, take screenshots of your monitoring dashboards and log files. Trust me on this one; you'll need this information later for your incident report and possibly for law enforcement. I've seen situations where quick-thinking admins lost track of what actually happened because they jumped straight into fixing mode without recording the evidence first.

Isolate and Investigate

Once you've contained the immediate threat, its time to work out how they got in. Check your access logs, review recent database changes, and look for any suspicious user accounts that shouldn't exist. Sometimes attackers create backdoor accounts they can use later—finding and removing these is absolutely necessary.

And here's something people often forget: notify your team and stakeholders. Your developers need to know whats happening; your management needs to understand the situation; and depending on what data might have been accessed, you may have legal obligations to report the breach. GDPR takes this stuff seriously, and the fines for not reporting can be substantial. Actually, they can be huge.

Building a Long-Term Database Security Strategy

Look, detecting threats as they happen is brilliant—but if you're constantly putting out fires, you're doing something wrong. The apps we build handle sensitive data every single day, and I've learned that reactive security is expensive security; you need a proper long-term strategy that actually prevents most attacks before they start.

Your database monitoring shouldn't be something you set up once and forget about. It needs to grow with your app. What works for 10,000 users wont work for 100,000, and your threat detection needs to evolve as hackers find new ways to break in. I mean, the methods people use to attack databases change constantly—what was considered secure three years ago might be completely outdated now.

Regular Security Audits

Schedule proper security reviews every quarter. Not just checking logs, but actually testing your systems the way an attacker would. Run penetration tests. Check your access controls. Make sure those real-time alerts are still catching what they're supposed to catch. Its tedious work, honestly, but finding a vulnerability during an audit is so much better than finding it during an actual breach.

The best database security strategy is the one that makes attacking your system more trouble than its worth

Training Your Team

Here's something most people miss—your security is only as good as the people managing it. Train your developers on secure coding practices. Make sure whoever's monitoring those security alerts knows what they're looking at and can respond quickly. Document everything so that knowledge doesnt live in one person's head. When someone leaves your team or goes on holiday, your security shouldnt take a holiday with them. Building these habits into your development process from the start means security becomes second nature rather than an afterthought, and that makes all the difference when real threats show up.

Conclusion

Look, database security isn't something you can just set up once and forget about—it needs constant attention, regular checks, and a proper understanding of whats normal for your specific setup. Throughout this guide we've covered the warning signs, the monitoring tools, and the response strategies you need to protect your data. But here's the thing—knowing about these things and actually implementing them are two very different challenges.

I've seen businesses put off setting up proper monitoring because they think it's too complex or too expensive, and then spend ten times more dealing with the aftermath of an attack. Its a bit mad really. The truth is, most database attacks succeed not because of sophisticated hacking techniques, but because basic security measures weren't in place. Simple things like monitoring failed login attempts, tracking unusual query patterns, and setting up real-time alerts can catch the majority of attacks before they cause serious damage.

Start small if you need to. You don't have to implement everything at once—even basic monitoring is better than nothing. Set up alerts for the most obvious warning signs first; things like multiple failed logins, queries running outside business hours, or sudden spikes in data access. Then build from there. Add more sophisticated monitoring as you go. Review your logs regularly (and I mean actually review them, not just collect them). Test your response procedures so everyone knows what to do when something looks wrong.

The mobile apps we build at Glance all rely on secure databases, and we've learned that proactive security isn't just about protecting data—its about maintaining trust with your users and avoiding the massive costs that come with breaches. Database security might seem like a technical problem, but its really a business priority that affects everything from your reputation to your bottom line.