Oracle Database Data Masking

Oracle Database RDBMS (or simply Oracle) is a multi-model database architecture commonly used for running online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing (DW) and sometimes mixed streams of OLTP and DW workloads.

The latest generation, Oracle Database 18c, is available on-premise, on-Cloud, and in a hybrid-Cloud deployment models. 18c now is considered the next database generation, Oracle “Autonomous” Database.

With the evolving Enterprise trends in adopting agility and supporting business continuity models, data volumes are moving more frequently than ever before for increased numbers of needs.

Data-centric security is the branch to security that emphasizes the security of the data itself, instead of the security and safety of the components of hosting infrastructure such as applications, servers, or networks. Security of data is evolving quickly, as enterprises more and more rely on digital information to run their business, and big data projects become more and more main-stream. Data-centric security also allows organizations to overcome the conflicts between IT security needs and the objectives of business strategy by relating security services directly to the data they implicitly protect; a relationship that is shall often be obscured by the presentation of security as an end in itself. This is when concepts such Data masking, Encryption and Auditing come into play.

Oracle Database Data masking Pack been there since Oracle Database 11g and it is meant to enable organizations to replace actual production data with realistic synthetic information while scrubbing it from any sensitive content, this is being accomplished by Oracle predefined rules in the Data Masking Pack allowing administrators and developers to build test and development environments with greater ease while not worrying about exposing Production data and instantaneously replacing them with factious data.

The 'Oracle Database Data masking Pack' is licensed separately as part of 'Oracle Enterprise Manager pack', which has been included with both the OEM Database Control and OEM Grid/Cloud Control, starting in Oracle Database 11gR2. Needless to say it costs business quite a lot.

Because of this pricing scheme, many organization would end up hindering such basic yet essential security aspect while moving data between implementation life cycles, using Production information for testing, development and in numerous unprivileged contexts.

DataSunrise Security Suite offerings deals with even wider spectrum of Data Centric Security capabilities and in particular, in extremely competitive cost to what you might incur as per Oracle Enterprise Licensing schemes.

DataSunrise Security Suite is capable of performing the following:

• Data Auditing: DataSunrise can enable to capture user activities including but not limited to user sessions, SQL queries code and its relevant results. DataSunrise stores this audit information in a proprietary database store that gets created during its initial configuration process. DataSunrise audit records can even be exported to external systems, such as SIEM.
• Data Protection: DataSunrise Database Firewall analyzes database traffic, detects and prevents any potential unauthorized actions such as queries and SQL injection trials dynamically while the data is on transit. Alerts and reports on detected threats can be forwarded to network administrators via email or instant messages.
• Data Discovery: DataSunrise Data Discovery facility enables your organization to scan your databases to help identifying vulnerable data that carries with it the risk of breaching regulatory compliances in your practices, it locates Personally Identifiable Information (PII), electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) and helps you to create a security rule for the columns that might contains sensitive data.
• Data Masking. DataSunrise Data Masking facility can dynamically masks your sensitive data on-transit by enforcing Security Rules that enable DataSunrise to generate synesthetic, realistic data without exposing your business to any regulatory breaches.

DataSunrise offers Dynamic and Static Data Masking algorithms for addressing all sorts of business requirements.

Masking Data can be really extensive and such a complicated process, but while DataSunrise has Data Discovery facility as an integral part of its security suite to help identifying vulnerable data that carries with it the risk of breaching regulatory compliances in your practices. You can use Data Discovery to enable you to identify the information that requires masking by instantaneously creating rules using DataSunrise’s intelligent console Rule Creation facility, which would dynamically provide with a smart wizard that would guide through the rule creation process.

DataSunrise’s Oracle Database Data masking rules can enable you to create rule as simple as using fixed number/string to replace the column data and can go as far creating complex custom function that would the most context sensitive masking requirements.