Database Activity Monitoring: Functionality, Benefits, and Challenges

Like many companies, you’re probably storing a massive amount of sensitive and personal information across your databases, which you’re obligated to keep private. Knowing exactly what is stored in your databases, where, and how it’s being accessed is key to maintaining control. That’s where Database Activity Monitoring (DAM) comes in.

While storing a wealth of data is important for understanding your customers, staying on top of market trends, and optimizing internal operations, it also comes at the risk of privacy being breached. In today’s data-heavy world, companies are gathering and storing more and more personal information—all of which must be kept private in accordance with stringent regulations.

DAM gives your privacy teams the eyes and ears they need to protect your stored data, uncover any privacy violations, and stay compliant with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA.

Let’s learn more about Data Activity Monitoring, how it supports stronger data privacy practices, and any obstacles it may face.

What are Database Activity Monitoring Solutions?

Database monitoring is the practice of tracking a database’s activity and performance. It allows your teams to gain a better understanding of how databases are being accessed and used and helps with troubleshooting any issues in data privacy. At their core, DAM solutions offer visibility into who is accessing sensitive data, when, and how.

Databases are often the foundation of a company’s software and systems; the data held within them drives customer understanding and thus shapes overall strategy. Because of this, it is quickly becoming necessary to use database activity monitoring software to keep this data private (in line with governance). Without it, issues with data privacy may go unnoticed, resulting in reputational damage and non-compliance.

So, how does database activity monitoring software work? Essentially, it continuously tracks and takes note of database activity in real time, logging user behavior and access patterns. This information can then be analyzed to determine any suspicious activity and ensure privacy policies are enforced.

BigID enhances DAM by enriching traditional activity monitoring with deep intelligence. With our capabilities, you can not only track database interactions but also understand how they might impact data privacy too. No more reactive privacy controls—you can proactively ingrain privacy-first practices into the heart of your systems.

Core Capabilities of DAM

To provide an all-round view of database activity, DAM tools use a combination of three main processes: performance monitoring, privacy monitoring, and compliance monitoring. These make up the overall database activity monitoring architecture.

Performance Monitoring

To give the best chance of protecting sensitive information, DAM software must first ensure your databases are performing at their best.
For example, how fast are the response times of the databases? How much memory are they taking up? And what are the error rates, if there are any?

If your database performance is poor, your teams may be forced to delay privacy checks and responses to data subject access requests, risking non-compliance with privacy laws. It also increases the risk of overly broad access controls.

DAM solutions—like BigID’s—deliver up-to-date insights on performance to help you keep your databases running as smoothly as possible and avoid these costly issues.

Privacy Monitoring

DAM processes provide a simple view of who is accessing data and how it’s being handled. Because data privacy regulations largely center on access controls and ethical use, this is highly useful. Having an overview of your data allows you to control who is accessing sensitive information and to monitor usage against regulations like GDPR and CPAA. Ultimately, this allows for proactive privacy—allowing you to identify risks before they become an issue.

Compliance Monitoring

As mentioned, data privacy laws (e.g., GDPR and CCPA, among others) are ever-changing and increasingly stringent. Fortunately, DAM tools support full transparency and accountability.

By noting all access to sensitive data, DAM software helps create a foolproof audit trail. It can also detect any policy violations to allow for rapid remediation.

But BigID goes one step further—enhancing this capability by connecting detected activity to specific data types or user roles. This deeper layer of understanding makes it easier to demonstrate compliance, refine access policies, and respond to audits with confidence.

Benefits of Database Activity Monitoring Tools

At this point, it should be clear that DAM’s capabilities have huge benefits for protecting data privacy; the more control you have over your data storage and usage, the easier it is to avoid privacy breaches. Here are a few ways that data privacy benefits from database activity monitoring tools:

Real-Time Visibility

In the past, manual and periodic processes may have enabled you to identify wrongful uses of private data after they’ve occurred—allowing for reactive rectification. Today, this simply isn’t enough. Once a data privacy breach occurs, you may already be non-compliant and subject to costly fines.

Modern DAM technology allows for a more immediate approach to data privacy, with real-time visibility into data access and usage. This enables you to spot potential privacy risks early.

Imagine a DAM tool flags an unusually large volume of sensitive data in one of your databases. With this up-to-date knowledge, you can take swift action to investigate, minimize the data, and contain this risk before it becomes a compliance issue.

Unauthorized Access Detection

Naturally, private data is most threatened when it falls into the wrong hands. To prevent this, you need to take a least-privilege approach to data access—giving only essential users the bare minimum amount of data they need to fulfill their duties.

DAM supports this by ensuring personal data is accessed appropriately, lawfully, and only by those with a legitimate reason. It flags any unauthorized access to databases where personal information is stored, allowing teams to act on this immediately. This ensures that no privacy rights are violated and helps you stay accountable for who sees sensitive data.

Data Minimization

Minimizing data—ensuring you’re storing only the absolutely necessary data needed for specific purposes—is a crucial aspect of data privacy. This is because any excess data you store increases the risk of someone’s privacy being compromised.

By continuously monitoring usage patterns, DAM software can identify when data is no longer needed, prompting your team to reduce, archive, or delete it.

Not only does this reduce your exposure to data risks, but minimization is a large part of most data privacy laws. As such, DAM supports policy enforcement too.

Common Challenges in Database Activity Monitoring

It’s clear that database activity monitoring has plenty of benefits, but it comes with its fair share of challenges too. Mostly, you must determine exactly what it is you want to monitor. Trying to keep tabs on everything may overwhelm teams, so it’s good to prioritize sensitive or personal data above anything else to optimize your DAM for data privacy. Here are some common obstacles that you may encounter:

Handling Large Data Volumes

It’s common for companies to store and process large volumes of data, and you may find that DAM becomes overwhelmed by the amount. After all, who doesn’t feel burdened by a huge to-do list? Unfortunately, with too much data, a DAM is less likely to accurately identify behavior patterns and identify anomalies.

Maintaining System Performance

You may find that using a DAM tool slows down your database systems due to its continuous profiling and logging. Unfortunately, this can hinder performance.

BigID addresses this using its powerful data intelligence platform—combining machine learning and behavioral analytics to identify privacy risks without overwhelming your systems with excessive logging. By focusing on access to sensitive data only, rather than all general data, we can prioritize privacy risks, reducing strain while ensuring robust insights.

False Positives

While flagging potential privacy risks is a useful feature of database activity monitoring, these can sometimes be false alarms. When a DAM throws up too many false positives, it drains resources unnecessarily and can create a “boy who cried wolf” scenario, leading to actual threats going unnoticed.

This challenge can be reduced by BigID’s ability to connect database activity with data context. For example, we classify different types of data, such as personally identifiable information (PII), payment details, or health-related data, and can tag this with sensitivity levels, from low to high risk. This helps you to determine what’s a real issue and what isn’t.

Beyond the Basics: BigID’s Smart DAM Solution

Want to go beyond surface-level surveillance? BigID’s DAM capabilities go one step further than traditional data detection and response (DDR) by providing real-time insights into data access activities with added context around the nature and sensitivity of the data. We enable you to proactively identify risks to data privacy by monitoring who accesses private data, when, and how.

This contextual intelligence helps you make better decisions about database access controls and streamlines compliance with detailed audit trails—strengthening overall data privacy posture.

Empower your privacy teams to safeguard personal data better than ever before. Schedule a demo to learn more.