Transport Layer Security and Firewalls

Oracle Database supports two application proxy-based and stateful packet inspection of firewalls.

These firewalls are as follows:

• Application proxy-based firewalls: Examples are Network Associates Gauntlet, or Axent Raptor.

• Stateful packet inspection firewalls: Examples are Check Point Firewall-1, or Cisco PIX Firewall.

When you enable TLS, stateful inspection firewalls behave like application proxy firewalls because they do not decrypt encrypted packets.

Firewalls do not inspect encrypted traffic. When a firewall encounters data addressed to a TLS port on an intranet server, it checks the target IP address against its access rules and lets the TLS packet pass through to permitted TLS ports, rejecting all others.