Managed Database

A managed database is a database that is hosted and managed by a third-party provider, rather than by the organization using the database. Managed databases are, in most cases, offered as cloud services, and the database provider maintains full control over the physical database server. 

The large public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud) all offer managed databases, e.g., AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) and Google BigQuery. Companies such as Oracle and MongoDB also offer managed, cloud-hosted instances of their databases. 

From a security standpoint, the challenge of using a managed database is the lack of direct access to the database server – which prevents cybersecurity teams from installing an agent to monitor data movement within the database. This gives rise to new categories of agentless data loss prevention technologies such as DDR.