Preface

The Oracle9i Security Overview presents the basic concepts of data security in the Internet age. It outlines fundamental data security requirements and explains the risks which threaten the integrity and privacy of your data. Several chapters introduce the rich array of technology that can contribute to system security. The book concludes with a survey of the Oracle features and products which implement these technologies.

Together, these products have the potential to control access to all the vulnerable areas of your system, and help users and administrators to perform their tasks without jeopardizing the security plan you have put in place.

This preface contains these topics:

Audience

The Oracle9i Security Overview is intended for database administrators (DBAs), application programmers, security administrators, system operators, and other Oracle users who perform the following tasks:

Analyze application security requirements
Create security policies
Implement security technologies
Administer enterprise user security

To use this document, you need general familiarity with database and networking concepts.

Organization

This document introduces the basic concepts of system security in the Internet Age. It outlines the data security risks which are prevalent today, and the industry-standard technologies available to address them. It then presents the carefully integrated suite of Oracle products you can use to implement these security technologies.

Part I: Security Challenges

This part explains the wide range of security risks to the integrity and privacy of data in the Internet Age.

Chapter 1, "Data Security Challenges in the Internet Age"

This chapter introduces the fundamental concepts of data security, and outlines the threats against which data and systems must be defended.

Part II: Technical Solutions to Security Risks

This part introduces the technology available to meet data security challenges.

Chapter 2, "Protecting Data Within the Database"

This chapter describes the fundamental elements of database security.

Chapter 3, "Protecting Data in a Network Environment"

This chapter explains how data can be protected while being transmitted over a network. It covers network access control, encryption, Secure Sockets Layer, and firewalls, as well as security in a three-tier environment.

Chapter 4, "Authenticating Users to the Database"

This chapter describes the wide range of technology available to verify the identity of database, application, and network users.

Chapter 5, "Using and Deploying a Secure Directory"

It can be advantageous to centralize storage and management of user-related information in a directory. This chapter describes how to protect such a directory, and how access can be controlled using a directory.

Chapter 6, "Administering Enterprise User Security"

This chapter describes the elements which make up a strong enterprise user management facility.

Chapter 7, "Auditing to Monitor System Security"

This chapter describes technology available to monitor the effectiveness of your security policies.

Chapter 8, "The Public Key Infrastructure Approach to Security"

This chapter introduces the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) approach to security. It describes the components of PKI, and explains why this has become an industry standard.

Part III: Oracle9i Security Products

This part presents the rich suite of Oracle security products which can meet your data security requirements.

Chapter 9, "Oracle9i Security Products and Features"

This chapter presents the major security-related products available with Oracle9i, and specifies the way in which each of them implements the kinds of security technologies described in Part II of this book.

Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
Bold	Bold typeface indicates terms that are defined in the text or terms that appear in a glossary, or both.	When you specify this clause, you create an index-organized table.
Italics	Italic typeface indicates book titles or emphasis.	Oracle9i Concepts Ensure that the recovery catalog and target database do not reside on the same disk.
`UPPERCASE monospace (fixed-width font)`	Uppercase monospace typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. Such elements include parameters, privileges, datatypes, RMAN keywords, SQL keywords, SQL*Plus or utility commands, packages and methods, as well as system-supplied column names, database objects and structures, usernames, and roles.	You can specify this clause only for a `NUMBER` column. You can back up the database by using the `BACKUP` command. Query the `TABLE_NAME` column in the `USER_TABLES` data dictionary view. Use the `DBMS_STATS`.`GENERATE_STATS` procedure.
`lowercase monospace (fixed-width font)`	Lowercase monospace typeface indicates executables, filenames, directory names, and sample user-supplied elements. Such elements include computer and database names, net service names, and connect identifiers, as well as user-supplied database objects and structures, column names, packages and classes, usernames and roles, program units, and parameter values. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	Enter `sqlplus` to open SQL*Plus. The password is specified in the `orapwd` file. Back up the datafiles and control files in the `/disk1/oracle/dbs` directory. The `department_id`, `department_name`, and `location_id` columns are in the `hr.departments` table. Set the `QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED` initialization parameter to `true.` Connect as `oe` user. The `JRepUtil` class implements these methods.
`lowercase monospace (fixed-width font) italic`	Lowercase monospace italic font represents placeholders or variables.	You can specify the `parallel_clause`. Run `U``old_release``.SQL` where `old_release` refers to the release you installed prior to upgrading.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
[ ]	Brackets enclose one or more optional items. Do not enter the brackets.	`DECIMAL (``digits` `[ ,` `precision` `])`
{ }	Braces enclose two or more items, one of which is required. Do not enter the braces.	`{ENABLE \| DISABLE}`
\|	A vertical bar represents a choice of two or more options within brackets or braces. Enter one of the options. Do not enter the vertical bar.	`{ENABLE \| DISABLE}` `[COMPRESS \| NOCOMPRESS]`
`...`	Horizontal ellipsis points indicate either: That we have omitted parts of the code that are not directly related to the example That you can repeat a portion of the code	`CREATE TABLE ... AS` `subquery``;` `SELECT` `col1``,` `col2``, ... ,` `coln` `FROM employees;`
. . .	Vertical ellipsis points indicate that we have omitted several lines of code not directly related to the example.
Other notation	You must enter symbols other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, and ellipsis points as shown.	`acctbal NUMBER(11,2);` `acct CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;`
`Italics`	Italicized text indicates placeholders or variables for which you must supply particular values.	`CONNECT SYSTEM/``system_password` `DB_NAME =` `database_name`
`UPPERCASE`	Uppercase typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. We show these terms in uppercase in order to distinguish them from terms you define. Unless terms appear in brackets, enter them in the order and with the spelling shown. However, because these terms are not case sensitive, you can enter them in lowercase.	`SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;` `SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES;` `DROP TABLE hr.employees;`
`lowercase`	Lowercase typeface indicates programmatic elements that you supply. For example, lowercase indicates names of tables, columns, or files. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	`SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;` `sqlplus hr/hr` `CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;`

Documentation Accessibility

The goal of Oracle Corporation is to make our products, services, and supporting documentation accessible to the disabled community with good usability. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For additional information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/.

JAWS, a Windows screen reader, may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, JAWS may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.