Introduction To Enterprise User Security; The Challenges Of User Management - Oracle Database B10772-01 Administrator's Manual

Introduction to Enterprise User Security

Introduction to Enterprise User Security
This section provides an overview of Enterprise User Security, explaining the
benefits, how enterprise users access resources across a distributed database system,
and how they are authenticated. It contains the following topics:

The Challenges of User Management

Administrators must keep user information up to date and secure for the entire
enterprise. This task becomes more difficult as the number of applications and users
increases. Typically, each user has multiple accounts on different databases, which
means each user must remember multiple passwords. The results of these
conditions are too many passwords for users to remember and too many accounts
for administrators to effectively manage.
With thousands of users accessing database accounts, administrators must devote
substantial resources to user administration. Common information used by multiple
applications, such as usernames, telephone numbers, and system roles and
privileges, is typically fragmented across the enterprise, contributing to data that is
redundant, inconsistent, and difficult to manage.
In addition to user and account management problems, these conditions produce
security problems as well. For example, any time a user leaves a company or
changes jobs, that user's privileges should be changed the same day in order to
guard against their misuse. However, in a large enterprise, if you have too many
user accounts distributed over multiple databases, an administrator may be unable
to make such timely changes. If your users have too many passwords, then they
may write them down (making them easy for others to copy), choose passwords
that are easy to remember (making them easy for others to guess), or choose the
same password for multiple applications (making a compromised password a
greater security risk). All of these user efforts to keep track of their multiple
passwords can compromise the security of the enterprise.
11-2 Oracle Database Advanced Security Administrator's Guide
The Challenges of User Management
Enterprise User Security: The Big Picture
About Enterprise User Security Directory Entries