Re: Security audit of Oracle databases

On Apr 11, 2005 4:15 PM, rachel carmichael <wisernet100_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> snipped except for relevant passage to pass the overquoting rule.....

> not necessarily a problem, at least not on Unix/Linux systems --
> sysadmin logs in as root and does an "su - oracle" (or the name of the
> Oracle binaries owner)...... then does
>
> connect / as sysdba
>
> and can reset whatever passwords are needed.
>

I would love to work in a UNIX/Linux only environment, love to. Unfortunately hetrogenous environments persist and we have people putting databases on Windows boxes and putting those Windows boxes in distant datacentres behind firewalls that don't let VNC, PCAnywhere or any of the other things that will let us get a remote console session on the box. Sometimes those datacentres and staffed by people who don't have any common language with us.

Plus there's the other situation that seems to keep occuring where the DBA and SA are the same person. IME small sites often have one DBA/SA, if they're unavailable then the company have problems. Even not so small sites can be dangerously short staffed in specialist fields. Where I currently work there are 50,000 employees, 500 of whom are in IT. Out of that 500 there is 1 DBA, 2 UNIX SAs and a partial DBA. A total of 2 people, me and another guy. If I'm off he can cover most of the day-to-day Oracle stuff and if he's off I can cover most of the UNIX stuff. If we both were incommunicado for an extended period then our enployer would be in deep do-do.

Stephen

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