Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) is a powerful database feature that allows developers and administrators to very quickly, persist data encrypted at-rest. Applications do not require explicit coding to encrypt data for storage. TDE manages encryption during storage, and decryption when data is read, transparently and automatically.

TDE can also be used during backups. In the typical "tape falls off the back of the truck" scenario, malicious actors would not be able to decipher the data on the lost tapes without the crucial encryption key stored in the Oracle Wallet. Assuming of course, the wallet was not backed up to the same tape.

This enterprise-grade feature is found in the Oracle Advanced Security Database Option. That requires user to be licensed for database enterprise edition. However, with Oracle Database 18c Express Edition (18cXE), Oracle has made it free and accessible by everyone!

This post was specially written for Oracle Application Express (APEX) developers who are new to this technology. It provides a simple workflow for creating an encrypted tablespaces. Since APEX application live on the database, placing the parsing schema on a TDE-enabled tablespace, automatically protects the entire application. Hopefully this will encourage you to use it for protecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or any other sensitive and confidential data.

Updated November 17, 2018 Please read this follow-up post as well. It contains an important note about intermediate certificates and where to download the root certificates.

One of the difficulties working with web services in the previous version of Oracle Database Express Edition (XE) was the lack of a usable Oracle Wallet. This was fast becoming a huge problems for developers, as many API providers started enforcing requirements to that clients accessed services through secured channels. When working with 11g XE, I often relied on proxies within a sandbox to mask the need for SSL/TLS. I discussed this somewhat at length in a previous blog post.

With the 18c release, Oracle has opened up and provided us developers the opportunities to make our apps safer. We now have access to the (orapki) tools needed to manage an Oracle Wallet. I don't do this a lot, so I keep a snippets of what I do to make this easy.

What a prelude to Oracle OpenWorld 2018 (OOW18)! ICYMI, the next-generation Oracle Database 18c Express Edition (18cXE) was released late last week. The database software comes with a bunch of free enterprise features and options that usually come with a hefty price tag. Among them, Oracle Advanced Analytics, Oracle Advanced Security and Oracle RDF Semantic Graph are my favourites! See the Features Availability for more details on the Oracle great giveaway!

Since Saturday, I have been kept busy working on getting the development environment ready for Fabe. It was just weeks ago since we had the environment up and running on 11gXE. The instance is fully driven on the back of Docker that made it easier to swap out the database.

Authentication is an essential component of any enterprise application. These days though, it isn't enough to protect your applications with only a username and password. These are easily stolen by key loggers, sniffing non-encrypted HTTP traffic, phishing, hacked Internet services and the list goes on. To make matters worse, many users have a poor habit of reusing passwords that thieves then use to penetrate other systems. I have had my fair share of that experience.

The question is, can we implement two-factor authentication (TFA) in Oracle Application Express (APEX)?

Here's my first contribution to the annual ODC Appreciation Day that was initiated by Tim Hall three years ago.

The product feature that I'd like to pay special tribute to this year is Oracle Multimedia (OMM). By now, I believe most would have heard that OMM has been deprecated. Mike Dietrich made special mention of it in a blog post earlier this year, with some clarity as to exactly when we can expect to see this useful feature go away for good.