MySQL Users and Security
In today's information based society nothing is more valuable than information. Today, that information is almost certainly stored in a database of some form or another. Whether it is a corporate sales database, a customer credit card database, or a table containing a list of names and social security numbers, there is a good chance that there are people out there who would love to get access to that data. It is for this reason that it is vital that a MySQL database be kept secure.
In this chapter we will provide an overview of securing user access to MySQL based databases.
MySQL Security
MySQL security works by limiting both the users who have access to a database and what they are allowed to do once that have access. This requires careful consideration of issues such as who is allowed to read from or write to particular database tables and which users have permission to delete tables or use other MySQL features.
Getting Information About Users
The first step securing a database is to find out which users already have access. This information is stored, not suprisingly, in a MySQL database called mysql.
