This chapter contains:
Oracle Database 2 Day + Security Guide teaches you how to perform day-to-day database security tasks. Its goal is to help you understand the concepts behind Oracle Database security. You will learn how to perform common security tasks needed to secure your database. The knowledge you gain from completing the tasks in Oracle Database 2 Day + Security Guide helps you to better secure your data and to meet common regulatory compliance requirements, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
The primary administrative interface used in this guide is Oracle Enterprise Manager in Database Console mode, featuring all the self-management capabilities introduced in Oracle Database.
This section contains the following topics:
Before using this guide:
Complete Oracle Database 2 Day DBA
Obtain the necessary products and tools described in "Tools for Securing Your Database"
Oracle Database 2 Day + Security Guide is task oriented. The objective of this guide is to describe why and when you must perform security tasks.
Where appropriate, this guide describes the concepts and steps necessary to understand and complete a task. This guide is not an exhaustive discussion of all Oracle Database concepts. For this type of information, see Oracle Database Concepts.
Where appropriate, this guide describes the necessary Oracle Database administrative steps to complete security tasks. This guide does not describe basic Oracle Database administrative tasks. For this type of information, see Oracle Database 2 Day DBA. Additionally, for a complete discussion of administrative tasks, see Oracle Database Administrator's Guide.
In addition, this guide is not an exhaustive discussion of all Oracle Database security features and does not describe available APIs that provide equivalent command line functionality to the tools used in this guide. For this type of information, see Oracle Database Security Guide.
As a database administrator for Oracle Database, you should be involved in the following security-related tasks:
Ensuring that the database installation and configuration is secure
Managing the security aspects of user accounts: developing secure password policies, creating and assigning roles, restricting data access to only the appropriate users, and so on
Ensuring that network connections are secure
Encrypting sensitive data
Ensuring the database has no security vulnerabilities and is protected against intruders
Deciding what database components to audit and how granular you want this auditing to be
Downloading and installing security patches
In a small to midsize database environment, you might perform these tasks as well and all database administrator-related tasks, such as installing Oracle software, creating databases, monitoring performance, and so on. In large, enterprise environments, the job is often divided among several database administrators—each with their own specialty—such as database security or database tuning.
To achieve the goals of securing your database, you need the following products, tools, and utilities:
Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2) Enterprise Edition
Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2) Enterprise Edition provides enterprise-class performance, scalability, and reliability on clustered and single-server configurations. It includes many security features that are used in this guide.
Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control
Oracle Enterprise Manager is a Web application that you can use to perform database administrative tasks for a single database instance or a clustered database.
SQL*Plus
SQL*Plus is a development environment that you can use to create and run SQL and PL/SQL code. It is part of the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2) installation.
Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA)
Database Configuration Assistant enables you to perform general database tasks, such as creating, configuring, or deleting databases. In this guide, you use DBCA to enable default auditing.
Oracle Net Manager
Oracle Net Manager enables you to perform network-related tasks for Oracle Database. In this guide, you use Oracle Net Manager to configure network encryption.
To learn the fundamentals of securing an Oracle database, follow these steps:
Secure your Oracle Database installation and configuration.
Complete the tasks in Chapter 2, "Securing the Database Installation and Configuration" to secure access to an Oracle Database installation.
Secure user accounts for your site.
Complete the tasks in Chapter 3, "Securing Oracle Database User Accounts", which builds on Oracle Database 2 Day DBA, where you learned how to create user accounts. You learn the following:
How to expire, lock, and unlock user accounts
Guidelines to choose secure passwords
How to change a password
How to enforce password management
Understand how privileges work.
Complete the tasks in Chapter 4, "Managing User Privileges". You learn about the following:
How privileges work
Why you must be careful about granting privileges
How database roles work
How to create secure application roles
Secure data as it travels across the network.
Complete the tasks in Chapter 5, "Securing the Network" to learn how to secure client connections and to configure network encryption.
Control access to data.
Complete the tasks in Chapter 6, "Securing Data", in which you learn about the following:
How to use transparent data encryption to automatically encrypt database table columns and tablespaces
How to control data access with Oracle Virtual Private Database
How to enforce row-level security with Oracle Label Security
How to control system administrative access to sensitive data with Oracle Database Vault.
Configure auditing so that you can monitor the database activities.
Complete the tasks in Chapter 7, "Auditing Database Activity" to learn about standard auditing.