Free SQL Server Compliance Benchmark Tool vs LevelBlue AppDetectivePRO

Free SQL Server Compliance Benchmark Tool assesses SQL Server security and configuration against established best practices. It covers on-premises SQL Server installations and Azure SQL Managed Instances, with more than 80 checks across platform configuration, surface area reduction, authentication, encryption, and auditing. The tool can generate a SQL Server Security Compliance Benchmark output in PDF format. It uses core capabilities of the XIA Configuration compliance benchmarking platform and offers a trial of SQL Server documentation functionality found in XIA Configuration Express. The tool is free; requesting it requires a full name and business email address. CENTREL, the company behind the tool, is headquartered in Oxford, United Kingdom, and was founded in 2008. CENTREL says its technical support staff are based in the UK and that remote support requires the customer's explicit consent, using tools such as TeamViewer and Microsoft Teams. The stated deployment is hybrid, and cloud databases and compliance templates are listed as supported.

LevelBlue AppDetectivePRO scans databases and big data stores for configuration errors, access-control issues, missing patches, and risky settings that could lead to compromise. It assesses databases on premises or in the cloud and supports discovery, assessment, and reporting on security, risk, or compliance posture. LevelBlue says the product has more than 50 built-in policies and 12 annual knowledge-base updates. SpiderLabs experts contribute vulnerability research to that knowledge base, and policies can be customized. Supported datastore examples include Amazon RDS, Azure SQL, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Couchbase, Elasticsearch, and Teradata. Licensing depends on the number and type of databases, with a licensed unit defined for each platform; pricing is available on request. A 30-day trial is offered. The trial license excludes some filtering or customization features, and technical support is unavailable during the trial. An evaluation without an evaluation license is limited to one scanned asset and one built-in policy, then stops running 30 days after first opening.