It's considered poor form to log in to root directly these days, particularly over ssh. Instead you log into a user account and either sudo or su to do what you require. It is wise to change the root password, so just log in as debian, sudo -s and then set the root password. If you choose to log in as root thereafter, you can do so, but you should check to see that root logins are allowed in sshd.conf.
In direct answer: logging in as debian should be fine, but it's not root. (Generally that's a good thing)
Best,
Jim