Security is a very important part of your SQL Server deployment and, in this chapter, we have seen many options that you can use to secure your SQL Server environment. You are making important choices already during the setup of your environment where you configure the service accounts and authentication. Once you have SQL Server up and running, you have to configure SQL Server logins for your groups and accounts, which provide them proper access to the SQL Server.
It's important to understand the difference between authentication and authorization. Just because you can log in to the SQL Server does not give you the rights to change configuration, access data, or perform any data changes. There are many configuration items which require sysadmin role membership and there's a frequent push from application teams and application DBAs to be part of this restricted...