Oracle Database Security Features

Authentication and authorization

Simplify user management by configuring centralized user authentication and authorization. Oracle Database can be seamlessly integrated with enterprise identity services—including Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Identity and Access Management—using a variety of authentication methods. Multifactor authentication can be configured using external identity services or the RADIUS API.

By adopting a robust authentication and authorization strategy, you can prevent rogue database user accounts from remaining active after employees leave the organization, reducing the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive data.

Blockchain tables

Blockchain tables in Oracle Database help ensure data integrity by creating insert-only, cryptographically chained records that can’t be altered or deleted, providing a tamper-proof audit trail and robust protection against unauthorized changes—even those bypassing the database.

By leveraging blockchain technology, you can create an immutable record of transactions that can’t be altered or deleted. This provides a robust solution when data integrity, auditability, and tamper-proof records are critical, such as with financial auditing, supply chain traceability, and secure voting systems.

Code-based access control

Limit data access to specific PL/SQL business logic with code-based access control (CBAC). By attaching database roles directly to PL/SQL program units, such as functions, procedures, and packages, you can help ensure that these roles are enabled only while that specific code is running. The program unit is executed with the required privileges, regardless of the calling user’s privileges, and without exposing those privileges or underlying objects directly to the user. By implementing CBAC, you can enforce the principle of least privilege, granting necessary permissions only to specific business logic, rather than to individual users or schemas.

DBMS_CRYPTO

The DBMS_CRYPTO PL/SQL package is used for cryptographic operations. It provides functions for encryption, decryption, and hashing and can be integrated with Oracle Key Vault for key management. DBMS_CRYPTO is especially useful when you need more control over cryptographic operations at the column, application, or individual data element level. This differs from transparent data encryption in that the data stays encrypted until the DBMS_CRYPTO package is called to decrypt the data, thereby securing it from overprivileged users and nefarious administrators.

DbNest

DbNest lets you address security and isolation challenges in Oracle Database multitenant environments by using Linux kernel features to create hierarchical, containerized runtime environments for multitenant container databases (CDBs) and pluggable databases (PDBs), helping ensure that each tenant’s resources are isolated from others.

By deploying DbNest, you can improve the security and isolation of your multitenant database environment and reduce the risk of lateral movement and privilege escalation attacks.

Developer role

Give your development team the right level of access with the DB_DEVELOPER_ROLE. This role provides a balanced set of privileges that lets developers create, modify, and deploy database objects, while still limiting their potential impact on database operations.

By adopting this role, you can reduce the risk of overprivileged developers making changes that compromise the security or integrity of your database, helping ensure that development teams have just enough access to build and test applications without compromising overall system security.

Fine-grained auditing

Organizations need precise insight into sensitive data access to meet security and compliance demands. Fine-grained auditing (FGA) enables targeted, condition-based auditing at the row and column level within the database and lets you specify custom handlers that can trigger an alert on suspicious activity. This delivers a high-value focused audit that helps detect unauthorized activity on sensitive data. FGA improves security visibility while minimizing performance impact and audit overhead. FGA’s unique capabilities—such as value-based auditing (for example, auditing only when someone selects an employee salary above a certain threshold) and custom handlers—strengthen Oracle Database security and help customers meet advanced auditing requirements.

Gradual password rollover

GManaging passwords across multiple applications and databases is complex and often leads to downtime, even with careful planning and synchronization.

Oracle’s gradual password rollover lets administrators change passwords without service disruption. Both old and new passwords work during the rollover period, allowing application teams to update credentials without downtime. This helps ensure continuous access and helps organizations meet compliance requirements for regular password rotation—simplifying management and reducing outages.

Immutable tables

Protect your Oracle Database tables against insider threats and accidental data corruption with immutable tables. These append-only tables prevent unauthorized data modifications by insiders and accidental data modifications resulting from human errors, helping ensure that your data remains accurate and up-to-date while maintaining its integrity and security. Immutable tables are useful for addressing requirements where data can’t be changed after it has been inserted.

Lockdown profiles

Implement fine-grained security controls for each PDB with lockdown profiles, allowing CDB administrators to restrict specific operations or features. For example, a lockdown profile can prevent PDB users from executing certain SQL statements or prevent running procedures that access the network.

Network ACLs

Network access control lists (ACLs) control outbound network access from the database through PL/SQL utility packages, such as UTL_TCP, UTL_HTTP, UTL_SMTP, and UTL_INADDR. Define fine-grained rules based on hostnames, ports, and privileges to control user access and prevent unauthorized connections. This provides an additional layer of protection against data exfiltration.

Network encryption

Encrypting database connections between clients and servers is a security best practice that helps ensure secure communication.

Oracle Database offers two methods for securing data in transit: Transport Layer Security (TLS) and native network encryption. TLS is an industry-standard protocol that provides strong encryption, authentication, and nonrepudiation. It requires server certificates and configuration on both client and server sides, making it ideal for environments with strict compliance or security requirements. Native network encryption, by contrast, is simpler to implement; it requires only a server-side parameter and works transparently for most applications. It negotiates the strongest supported algorithm automatically, with no need for certificates or client changes.

Oracle wallet

A wallet (or keystore) is a password-protected, encrypted container used to securely store authentication and signing credentials, such as private keys, certificates, and database credentials. In Oracle Database environments, wallets enable secure communication across the network by supporting TLS for both clients and servers, storing transparent data encryption (TDE) master keys, and facilitating integration with external services, such as Microsoft Active Directory. Wallets also provide a secure external password store, letting applications connect to the database without embedding credentials in code. Although wallets can hold TDE master keys, Oracle recommends managing them with Oracle Key Vault for enhanced security and centralized key management.

Privilege analysis

Applications and users often receive excessive privileges, especially in complex or legacy environments. This makes it difficult for administrators to revoke access safely without risking disruptions. Privilege analysis dynamically captures which privileges and roles are used at runtime. This lets administrators confidently revoke unnecessary privileges and enforce a least privilege model, reducing the attack surface.

Read-only users

With read-only users, you can disable or re-enable a user’s or session’s write capabilities without revoking and regranting privileges. Read-only users let you temporarily control user or session privileges for testing, administration, or application development.

Real Application Security

Real Application Security meets the demand for fine-grained, context-aware access control in modern enterprise and AI-driven applications, where traditional security models fall short. Real Application Security provides a declarative, database-enforced framework that combines secure identity propagation with row and column-level access control. Leveraging attribute-based access control, Real Application Security evaluates user attributes—such as role, department, or geographic location—at runtime to determine access rights. For example, nurses may view only the medical records of patients assigned to their care units, while physicians can access additional diagnostic details, but sensitive fields, such as mental health history or reproductive health data, remain hidden unless their role explicitly permits it. By embedding access control logic directly into the database, Real Application Security eliminates reliance on application code, simplifies development, and helps organizations meet strict privacy, security, and compliance requirements at scale.

Schema-level privileges

Traditionally, privileges in Oracle Database were granted at the object level (for example, SELECT ON hr.employees) or at a broader level with system privileges (for example, SELECT ANY TABLE). If a user needed access to all tables or all procedures in a schema, the DBA had to explicitly grant access to each object individually—or use overly broad system privileges, such as SELECT ANY TABLE, which created security risks.

The schema-level privileges feature improves security by simplifying authorization for database objects, especially in schemas that frequently add new objects.

Instead of granting broad system privileges that apply to the entire database, DBAs can now grant privileges at the schema level. The schema-level system privilege applies to both current and future objects in the schema. Schema-level privileges are useful for applications that evolve frequently and need to add new objects to their schema without over-granting privileges to users.

Secure application roles

Modern applications demand context-aware security to protect sensitive data and meet compliance requirements. Oracle secure application roles prevent unauthorized privilege use by allowing role activation only under controlled, database-defined conditions. Unlike traditional roles, they can’t be misused through direct login or external tools. Only a PL/SQL package or procedure, ideally with logic tied to the application context, can enable a secure application role. Secure application roles provide stronger enforcement of access policies, reduce the attack surface, and help maintain consistent security—all without requiring changes to application logic.

Transparent Sensitive Data Protection

Transparent Sensitive Data Protection lets users quickly identify and classify sensitive data in database tables, then create a policy to protect this data. The policy applies at the column level, targets specific data types, and uses Oracle Data Redaction or Oracle Virtual Private Database settings to protect sensitive information, such as credit card numbers or Social Security numbers. This feature lets users create uniform policies across multiple Oracle databases, which can be modified as compliance regulations change. Transparent Sensitive Data Protection policies offer easy application across large organizations, simplified auditing, and consistent policy enforcement—especially in government environments with similar security restrictions.

Unified auditing

Oracle Database comprehensive auditing capabilities track the use of privileges, activities of highly privileged users, access to sensitive data, actions performed on database objects, and modifications made to database settings. Unified auditing provides conditional and column-level auditing capabilities to audit activity on sensitive data under certain conditions. Audit records are stored on a tamper-proof trail.

Virtual Private Database

Organizations often struggle to enforce fine-grained data access, especially when different users need different views of the same table. Traditional methods rely on complex application logic or static views, which are difficult to manage, audit, and secure.

Oracle Virtual Private Database addresses this by enforcing row and column-level security directly within the database. Virtual Private Database dynamically appends filtering predicates to SQL queries, based on user identity or session context. This helps ensure that users only see data they’re authorized to access—regardless of how they connect. Security policies are centralized, transparent to applications, and adapt to runtime conditions, helping ensure consistent enforcement. Virtual Private Database protects against data leakage, supports regulatory compliance, and simplifies application development. Virtual Private Database is a scalable, context-aware solution for data access control. With Virtual Private Database, security is enforced where the data lives.