About Authentication

Authentication means verifying the identity of a user, device, or other entity who wants to use data, resources, or applications.

Validating this identity establishes a trust relationship for further interactions. Authentication also enables accountability by making it possible to link access and actions to specific identities. After authentication, authorization processes can allow or limit the levels of access and action permitted to that entity.

You can authenticate both database and non-database users for an Oracle database. For simplicity, the same authentication method is generally used for all users in the same database, but the Oracle Database allows a single database instance to use any or some combination of methods. Oracle Database requires special authentication procedures for database administrators because they perform privileged database operations.

Authentication and authorization access can be grouped into three types.

Local database authentication and authorization is provided with the database and is simple to use. However, centralized external authentication is much more secure and reduces the database administrator workload by offloading user credential management to an external identity service.

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