Free SQL Server Compliance Benchmark Tool vs SQLTriage

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.

SQLTriage audits SQL Server and maps findings to compliance controls, with cited evidence and a PDF for board-level review. It describes more than 576 checks across security, performance, configuration, high availability, backup, and recovery. Mappings cover NIST 800-53, CIS Benchmarks, DISA STIG, ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI-DSS, and HIPAA. Its read-only assessment queries SQL Server DMVs without installing an agent or changing the schema; separate opt-in deployment and remediation pages can make changes. Companion monitoring views include live sessions, blocking chains, query plans, wait statistics, dashboards, and alerts. The repository says the app is local-only by default, without telemetry, phone-home behavior, or a cloud dependency, and supports optional Azure Blob export. SQL passwords are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM and DPAPI. It supports Windows authentication, SQL authentication, and Azure AD. Azure SQL Managed Instance is fully supported; Azure SQL Database has partial support, and checks needing server-level DMV access are skipped automatically. SQLTriage is free under GNU GPL v3, allowing commercial use while requiring modifications to remain open.