About Oracle Database Vault

Typically, the main job of an Oracle database administrator is to perform tasks such database tuning, installing upgrades, monitoring the state of the database, and then remedying any problems that he or she finds. In a default Oracle Database installation, database administrators also have the ability to create users and access user data. For greater security, you should restrict these activities only to those users who must perform them. This is called separation of duty, and it frees the database administrator to focus on tasks ideally suited to his or her expertise, such as performance tuning.

By restricting administrator access to your Oracle databases, Oracle Database Vault helps you to follow common regulatory compliance requirements, such as the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) requirements, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act, European Union (EU) Privacy Directive, and Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). These regulations require strong internal controls on access, disclosure or modification of sensitive information that could lead to fraud, identity theft, financial irregularities and financial penalties.

Oracle Database Vault provides the following ways for you to restrict administrator access to an Oracle database:

• Group database schemas, objects, and roles that you want to secure. This grouping is called a realm, and all the components of the realm are protected. After you, the Database Vault administrator, create a realm, you designate a user to manage access to the realm. For example, you can create a realm around one table within a schema, or around the entire schema itself.

• Create PL/SQL expressions to customize your database restrictions. You create an expression in a rule, and for multiple rules within one category, you can group the rules into a rule set. To enforce the rules within the rule set, you then associate the rule set with a realm or command rule. For example, if you wanted to prevent access to a database during a maintenance period (for example, from 10 to 12 p.m.), you can create a rule to restrict access only during those hours.

• Designate specific PL/SQL statements that are accessible or not accessible to users. These are called command rules. A command rule contains a command to be protected and a rule set that determines whether the execution of the command is permitted. You can create a command rule to protect SELECT, ALTER SYSTEM, database definition language (DDL), and data manipulation language (DML) statements that affect one or more database objects. You can associate a rule set to further customize the command rule.

• Define attributes to record data such as session users or IP addresses that Oracle Database Vault can recognize and secure. These attributes are called factors. You can use factors for activities such as authorizing database accounts to connect to the database or creating filtering logic to restrict the visibility and manageability of data. To further customize the factor, you can associate a rule set with it.

• Design secure application roles that are enabled only by Oracle Database Vault rules. After you create the secure application role in Oracle Database Vault, you associate a rule set with it. The rule set defines when and how the secure application role is enabled or disabled.

You can create these components by using either Oracle Database Vault Administrator, or by using its PL/SQL packages.