Oracle Magazine - July/August 2012

Meade is in the process of developing a white list and a black list
of various types of SQL statements. “Anything that is on the white
list gets through, and everything on the black list is blocked,” he
explains. “The database firewall analyzes SQL traffic. Based on poli-
cies we establish, it chooses to block, substitute, log, or send an alert
about each suspicious statement.”
In addition to evaluating the legitimacy of SQL statements, Oracle
Database Firewall can consider factors such as the requester’s IP
address, time, and program name. TransUnion Interactive can choose
to deploy it in blocking mode as a database policy enforcement system
as well as for supplemental auditing and compliance purposes.

A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW

Martin Kuppinger, founder and principal analyst at KuppingerCole, a
leading analyst company for identity-focused information security,
explains the importance of this type of defense. “While a network
firewall controls access to I T resources at the IP level, it looks at
packets, so it doesn’t have a very deep understanding of what
happens at the SQL level. Database firewalls provide in-depth pro-
tection for communication to databases by monitoring and enforcing
normal application behavior. They prevent SQL injection attacks and
unauthorized SQL commands.”
Kuppinger sees database encryption and database firewalls as
an important part of a complete database security strategy. Other
essential technologies include data masking for test environments
and controlling access to databases. “It’s important to have solutions
for every aspect, starting with strong authentication and granular
access control to databases, ensuring that operators and database
administrators can’t abuse their privileges,” Kuppinger concludes. “If
you trust only one database security solution, you will fail to address
all of these different aspects. Leaving some doors open doesn’t really
solve your enterprise security issues.” 

David Baum ( david@dbaumcomm.com) is a freelance business writer.

NEXT STEPS

READ more about database security “Effective Data Leak Prevention Programs: Start by Protecting Data at the Source—Your Databases” oracle.com/us/products/database/039434.pdf Oracle Database Security oracle.com/us/products/database/security/overview

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