Security of Enterprise-Wide Client-Server Oracle Systems

I am investigating how to best secure Oracle databases against unauthorized access and eavesdropping in the following environment:

• client-server architecture
  • HP-UX Oracle (70%), Sun Oracle (15%), Motorola Oracle (5%), and HP-UX Informix (10%) servers
  • Mac (60%), Unix (20%), and Windows (20%) clients
• desktop and telephone pad applications with 20,000-100,000 registered users
• ultra high speed enterprise-wide AppleTalk and TCP/IP networks

1. Use Oracle Stored Procedures throughout, ensuring that the client application has execute only privileges on these procedures and must pass authentication parameters to each procedure. Under this alternative, the client application can login as a 'guest' as it must access all data through OSPs.
2. Establish an Oracle 'security' database which maintains a unique Oracle userid for every potential user (i.e. every employee). Under this alternative, the client application logs in on behalf of the current user. Does anyone have any experience in managing 20-100K registered users under Oracle? I had once rejected this out of hand, but it might be practical.
3. Buy SecurID (or build equivalent) to provide dynamic password generation. Under this alternative, security of login transaction is not an issue as login password expires every 60 seconds.

In all cases, it will be desirable to encrypt some transactions so as to protect sensitive data from eavesdroppers. This means that specified SQL*Net messages could not be sent in the clear; it would be necessary to encrypt/decrypt these messages at the network layer at both ends -- client and server. Are there any products available or in development which would do this?

Vis-a-vis encryption, I'm thinking that it might prove very useful to be able to call a C function from an Oracle Stored Procedure and/or upon firing an Oracle trigger. Is this in the works at Oracle?

Is anyone out there working on voice print authentication? I know that this is used forensically in law enforcement; is anyone using this proactively, to secure access to real property and data.

I will be developing these alternative ideas in greater detail and would appreciate any experience, expertise, or insight that you could share. We already have very good overall systems security but are keen on architecting an elegant solution that is performance-oriented, flexible and scalable.

Please feel free to reply by mail, news, phone or fax as appropriate.

Jason Lisenchuk
Enterprise Management Systems
Northern Telecom Limited
<hris_at_bnr.ca>
Voice +1 905/452-2188
Fax +1 905/452-2298 Received on Wed Oct 13 1993 - 21:09:26 CET