Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
compliance is being increasingly required by government regulation, so the ability of
the Oracle Database to make compliance easy is becoming correspondingly important.
Compliance is crucial for many organizations, and the people responsible for guaran‐
teeing compliance are not necessarily in the IT department. Consequently, the imple‐
mentation of security and audit schemes has had to be simplified and coordinated to
address compliance needs.
Oracle has two options specifically designed to address compliance challenges—Oracle
Data Vault and Oracle Audit Vault; these are described in the following sections. The
related Flashback Data Archive capability, also mentioned below, is described in greater
detail in
Chapter 3
. In addition, privilege analysis, mentioned above, can be used to
demonstrate the extent of privilege grants to auditors.
Oracle Database Vault Option
The Oracle Database Vault Option was introduced in 2006 and restricts DBAs and other
highly privileged users from accessing application data to which they should not have
access. It can also be set up so that applications' DBAs are not allowed to manipulate
the database or access other applications. A security administrator can use the Oracle
Database Vault Option to describe the security scheme that the organization wants to
implement, and this option automatically implements the schemes using the features
described earlier in this chapter.
Key parameters defined in the Oracle Database Vault Option are called
factors
. A factor
is essentially a descriptive dimension that will affect security across the entire database.
Factors include things such as specific application programs, locations, or times of day.
This option comes with more than 40 factors defined, and users can create their own
factors.
Factors are used to define access and audit particular security dimensions. You can create
rules that limit types of access to a particular factor and rule sets that combine multiple
factor rules together. Once you have defined rule sets, you can create application roles
based on these sets, as well as command rules that control whether database commands
can be executed, based on the outcome of rule evaluation. For example, you could pre‐
vent anyone from dropping a particular table unless the command came from a par‐
ticular location defined by a factor, or specify that new users can be defined only by the
combined actions of two administrators.
Rules can also be used to define database
realms
, which consist of a subset of the schemas
and roles that an administrator can administer. This ability is essential if an organization
uses its Oracle Database to service multiple communities. You can define a realm and
give an administrator privileges on that realm without compromising data in other
schemas. The overall effect of realms is to allow secure delegation of administrative
responsibilities.
