RE: OT: Oracle Critical Patch Article

From: Roberts, David \(GSD - UK\) <david.h.roberts_at_logicacmg.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:50:08 -0000
Message-ID: <3F68C0782802BC4C9BB984966DF1821505E1FCD3@uk-ex001.groupinfra.com>


According to the register, any company that has at least 300 US shareholders is 'bound by the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley':  

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/11/europeans_slam_sarbox/  

David Roberts  

LogicaCMG UK Limited
Registered in England and Wales (registered number 947968) Registered office: Stephenson House, 75 Hampstead Road, London NW1 2PL, United Kingdom

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Kerber Sent: 15 January 2008 19:08
To: niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com
Cc: bdbafh_at_gmail.com; Chris.Taylor_at_ingrambarge.com; oracle-l Subject: Re: OT: Oracle Critical Patch Article  

Sarbanes-Oxley doesnt apply to the UK either. Do you have a similar law?

On Jan 15, 2008 12:36 PM, Niall Litchfield <niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com > wrote:

The article predates the CPU, and indeed the survey may well predate the last one.

I asked a similar question to a room full of apps dbas at UKOUG - though to be fair I was talking about how to apply CPUs to EBS so it was a biased audience. There were probably 75-100 people in the room (53 responded to the questionnaire and you never get everyone). 1 person was up to date, at least 2/3rd had never applied a CPU. Other people tend to find similar results.

On the "we are not exposed to the internet" front, that has some merit but then the vast majority of attacks are internal anyway.

Niall  

On Jan 15, 2008 5:12 PM, Paul Drake < bdbafh_at_gmail.com> wrote:  

On Jan 15, 2008 10:42 AM, Taylor, Chris David
<Chris.Taylor_at_ingrambarge.com> wrote:

How many of you guys have seen this?  

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic
<http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic
&articleId=9057226&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8> &articleId=9057226&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8  

What are your thoughts? I know our organization falls into that category but primarily because we aren't exposed to the outside world. We don't have external applications so most times I believe that critical patch updates can be applied during a normal maintenance period.  

chris

Chris,

The press release is located here:
http://www.sentrigo.com/press_releases-newsid-39.htm

and Pete Finnigan wrote about it here:
http://www.petefinnigan.com/weblog/archives/00001141.htm

Clearly, the company providing the figures has a self interest in having a market for its products and services (which is disclaimed at the bottom of the press release page).

"When asked: "Have you installed the latest Oracle CPU?" - Just 31 people, or ten percent of the 305 respondents, reported that they applied the most recently issued Oracle CPU."

I just downloaded "the latest" critical patch update this morning, as that is when it was released. I plan to apply it in a testing environment later this afternoon.
Perhaps semantics matter here just a bit.

Only 35 people in the survey replied yes to one of the questions. That's a fairly small sample, statistically speaking. If a dba only gathered (estimated) stats with a sample size of 32 blocks out of a table with say 32K blocks, I doubt that the stats would be very accurate.

Would developers be inclined to apply critical patch updates to development servers (where there is no formal dba position)? I would think not.

Are critical patch updates available for Oracle XE databases? No.

Are some applications running on database versions or patchsets that do not have critical patch updates made available? Yes. (8.1.7.4 and 10.1.0.4 spring to mind.)

Would a dba be concerned about remote vulnerabilities for databases that support only connections from application servers that are secured? Probably not.

I'm skeptical that the results are representative and are useful for anything other than stirring discussion (and marketing).

Paul

-- 
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.orawin.info 




-- 
Andrew W. Kerber

'If at first you dont succeed, dont take up skydiving.' 

 



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Received on Wed Jan 16 2008 - 04:50:08 CST

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