2 posts tagged with "pki"

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.