Designing and implementing advanced security measures in Oracle databases is an essential part of protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access. In this answer, we’ll discuss three popular security measures - Database Vault, Transparent Data Encryption, and Data Redaction - and provide a high-level overview of their implementation.
Database Vault:
Database Vault is a built-in feature of Oracle Database that provides a comprehensive set of advanced security controls to protect the database from privileged user access. Database Vault introduces the concept of realms to enforce security policies that restrict access to sensitive data based on specific criteria such as roles, IP address, time of day, etc. Additionally, it allows organizations to restrict administrative privileges, so the administrative actions must be based on authorization rules which prevent specific operations from occurring in a non-authorized time. The enforcement of the security policies is performed through the database firewall, which is a software component that works in conjunction with other security features to restrict access to sensitive data.
Implementing Database Vault involves a few steps:
1. Installation: The first step is to install the Database Vault option on top of an existing Oracle Database.
2. Configuration: Once installed, the Database Vault configuration process can be initiated using the DVRCTLP utility. The configuration of the Database Vault requires creating the components of the feature such as realms, command rules, and factor rules.
3. Enabling Database Vault policies: After creating the components, Database Vault policies must be enabled to restrict the access to sensitive data based on specific attributes.
Transparent Data Encryption:
Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) provides an additional layer of protection to Oracle Database by encrypting sensitive data on disk. TDE is a part of Oracle Advanced Security option which encrypts the data in the database’s tablespaces, data files, and backups, to avoid data theft and unauthorized data access. The encryption algorithm used by TDE is AES-256, which is a symmetric-key encryption algorithm.
Implementing TDE involves a few steps:
1. Configuring the wallet: The first step is to configure the wallet that stores the encryption keys. The wallet must be created and stored in a secure location, and the wallet password must be known to authorized users who require access to the encrypted data.
2. Creating the TDE tablespace: Once the wallet is configured, a TDE-enabled tablespace can be created, and the underlying data files will be encrypted automatically.
3. Enabling TDE for existing tablespaces: Organisations that have existing non-TDE tablespaces can enable TDE via online tablespace encryption or offline tablespace encryption.
Data Redaction:
Data Redaction is another built-in feature of Oracle Database that offers data masking services for data exposure to non-authorized users. Data Redaction works by replacing sensitive data with fictional but realistic data. The data masking functions can be conditioned to a specific time, user, or role, making it flexible.
Implementing Data Redaction involves three steps:
1. The first step is to create a policy that identifies the sensitive data in the database.
2. The sensitivity types are anonymized by using a redaction function such as full redaction, partial redaction, or regular expression redaction, etc.
3. Finally, the policy must be enabled to apply the data redaction modification to the table attributes.
In conclusion, Oracle database provides an array of built-in security features include Database Vault, TDE, Data Redaction, etc. while following implementation steps to safeguard sensitive information of an organization from unauthorized access. Furthermore, it’s recommended to consider implementing robust and unique access controls, identification of who has access to sensitive data, and adherence to industry-specific regulations in the data security strategy.