Securing Oracle Databases with Oracle Data Safe

 

 

 

What Is Oracle Data Safe?
Oracle Data Safe is a cloud-based, unified security control center designed specifically for Oracle Databases — whether they reside in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Autonomous Database, or on-premises deployments.

It simplifies the complex, manual tasks involved in securing databases and meeting compliance requirements. With a few clicks, you can evaluate risks, analyze user privileges, discover sensitive data, apply masking policies, and audit activities.

 

Features of Oracle Data Safe:

 

 

 

🔍 1. Security Assessment
The Security Assessment feature evaluates the security posture of your Oracle Databases.
It reviews configurations, user accounts, and security controls, then provides detailed findings with actionable recommendations to reduce or mitigate risks.

Key aspects:

• Analyzes configuration settings, user privileges, and security parameters.
• Compares against industry frameworks like STIG, CIS Benchmarks, EU GDPR, and Oracle best practices.
• Generates an overall Security Score and a prioritized list of vulnerabilities.
• This ensures your databases consistently align with compliance standards and internal security policies.

👥 2. User Assessment
User Assessment identifies users and accounts that may pose security risks due to excessive privileges, weak authentication, or poor password practices.
It analyzes user data stored in the database dictionary and assigns a risk score to each user.

Capabilities include:

• Identifies highly privileged or inactive accounts.
• Evaluates password policies, authentication types, and password change frequency.
• Links directly to related audit trail entries for deeper investigation.
• This enables DBAs and security teams to implement least-privilege access controls and strengthen user governance.

🧭 3. Data Discovery
Data Discovery automates the identification of sensitive data within your Oracle Databases.
It scans both data and metadata to locate information that could fall under privacy or compliance regulations.

Highlights:

• Detects data across multiple sensitivity categories — personal, financial, healthcare, employment, academic, and more.
• Offers default discovery templates or lets you define custom data models to fit your organization’s classification standards.
• Produces clear reports listing schemas, tables, and columns containing sensitive data.
• With Data Discovery, you know exactly where your critical data resides — a foundational step toward compliance and data protection.

🧩 4. Data Masking
The Data Masking feature helps organizations protect sensitive data when replicating or sharing databases for development, testing, or analytics.
It replaces real values with realistic but fictitious data, maintaining referential integrity while ensuring privacy.

Key benefits:

• Supports multiple masking formats — randomization, substitution, nullification, and lookup-based.
• Integrates seamlessly with Data Discovery results for consistent masking policies.
• Enables safe use of production-like data in non-production environments.
• This reduces the risk of data exposure and helps organizations comply with data privacy regulations.

📜 5. Activity Auditing
Activity Auditing provides continuous visibility into who is doing what in your databases.
It captures user activities — from logins and schema changes to data queries and privilege modifications.

Capabilities:

• Monitors database activity in real time.
• Generates audit reports for compliance and governance reviews.
• Detects unusual or unauthorized access patterns.
• Auditing is crucial for incident investigation, accountability, and regulatory compliance.

⚡ 6. Alerts
Alerts keep you informed of unusual or high-risk database activities as they occur.
You can define custom thresholds or use predefined alert templates to detect anomalies in user behavior or database operations.
With proactive alerting, teams can respond faster to threats, minimizing potential damage and downtime.

🧱 7. SQL Firewall (New in Oracle AI Database 26ai)
The SQL Firewall introduces an advanced layer of protection directly at the SQL level, helping safeguard databases from SQL injection attacks, compromised accounts, and unauthorized queries.
Oracle Data Safe acts as the central management hub for SQL Firewall policies across all connected databases.

Capabilities:

• Collects and baselines authorized SQL activities for each user.
• Generates allowlist-based firewall policies that define approved SQL statements and connection paths.
• Monitors and reports SQL Firewall violations in real time across your entire database fleet.
• This feature enables a zero-trust approach to database access — ensuring only verified SQL statements are executed against your most sensitive systems. 

 

Step-by-Step Configuration Guide:

• Sign in to your OCI Console with appropriate privileges (Security Administrator or tenancy-level admin).
• In the left navigation menu, go to Oracle AI Database → Data Safe - Database Security 

 

  

Step 2: Register Your Database
Before you can run any assessments or audits, your database needs to be registered with Data Safe.

Supported Target Databases:

• On-Premises Oracle AI Database
• Oracle Autonomous AI Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure 
• Oracle Autonomous AI Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer
• Oracle Autonomous AI Database Serverless
• Oracle Base Database Service
• Oracle AI Database on a compute instance in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
• Oracle Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer
• Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure
• Oracle Exadata Database Service on Exascale Infrastructure
• Amazon RDS for Oracle
• Oracle Database@AWS
• Oracle Database@Azure
• Oracle Database@Google Cloud

Lets Register an Autonomous Database 

In the OCI Console, navigate to Data Safe → Targets → Register Target Database.

 

 

For Database Type, select Autonomous Database.

Under Data Safe Target Information:

• Choose the Compartment where your database resides.
• Select your database from the drop-down list of available Autonomous Databases.
• Enter a Display Name for your Data Safe target.
• (Optional) Add a Description to help identify the purpose or environment of this database (e.g., “Data Safe practice environment”).
• Choose a Compartment for the target registration and (Optional) apply Tags for easier management and automation.
• Review the connection details to ensure the selected database and compartment information are correct. 

 

Click Register to complete the process.

 

 

Step 3: Explore the Data Safe Dashboard

After completing the registration, your target database will now appear in the Targets list with an Active status — confirming a successful connection to Oracle Data Safe.

Now, let’s move to the Oracle Data Safe Dashboard, the central console where you can view, monitor, and manage all your database security operations.

 

In the OCI Console, navigate to

Oracle AI Database → Data Safe - Database Security → Dashboard and click

This will take you to the Data Safe → Security Center → Dashboard, where you can view an integrated overview of your database security posture — including assessments, user risks, sensitive data discovery, and audit summaries across all registered databases.

 

 

You can view quick summaries such as:

Security assessment:

 

User assessment:

 

From this dashboard, you can easily navigate to each of the key features:
Assessments – Run or view Security and User Assessments
Data Discovery & Masking – Identify and protect sensitive data
Auditing – Monitor and analyze database activities
SQL Firewall & Alerts – Manage SQL protection and incident notifications

This blog covers the high-level steps to set up Oracle Data Safe.
In the next post, I will share more detailed insights and advanced configurations to get the most out of Data Safe.