Guidelines for Securing Operating System Access to Oracle Database

You can secure access to Oracle Database on the operating system level by following these guidelines:

• Limit the number of operating system users.

• Limit the privileges of the operating system accounts (administrative, root-privileged, or DBA) on the Oracle Database host (physical computer). Only grant the user the least number of privileges needed to perform his or her tasks.

• Restrict the ability to modify the default file and directory permissions for the Oracle Database home (installation) directory or its contents. Even privileged operating system users and the Oracle owner should not modify these permissions, unless instructed otherwise by Oracle.

• Restrict symbolic links. Ensure that when you provide a path or file to the database, neither the file nor any part of the path is modifiable by an untrusted user. The file and all components of the path should be owned by the database administrator or some trusted account, such as root.

  This recommendation applies to all types of files: data files, log files, trace files, external tables, BFILEs, and so on.