New Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall

In the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, it went under that Oracle had released a new version of Oracle Audit Vault respectively Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall. This weekend I found some time to take a first look into the new release.

What’s New

About a year ago Oracle released the Audit Vault Server 10.3. (see New release of Oracle Audit Vault). During this update Oracle mainly moved internally to a 11.2.0.3 database. The architecture has remained more or less the same. But this has changed now. Oracle is trying to complete its security portfolio. Therefore Oracle has merged the two Oracle Audit Vault and Oracle Database Firewall into the new Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall. From the security officer point of view it is definitely more interesting to only have one platform. On the other hand a software appliance is one of the favorites of the DBA and Unix admins. What about, updates, HA, backup & recovery etc? I’ll try to consider these thoughts in a later post on installing and configuring the new Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall.

Some short notes on the new features:

  • Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall is released as a software appliance-based platform
  • Internally Oracle does use Oracle 11.2.0.3 including Advance Security and Database Vault to enforce Database security and segregation of duties
  • One simple setup does install and configure the operating system, software, database, web frontend etc
  • Audit Vault Agents for:
  • Oracle Database 10g
  • Oracle Database 11g
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2000
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2005
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008
  • Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) versions 12.5.4 to 15.0.x
  • IBM DB2 version 9.x (Linux, UNIX, Microsoft Windows)
  • Solaris operating system
  • Oracle ACFS
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2008
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Microsoft Active Directory 2008
  • Microsoft Active Directory 2008 R2 on 64 bit

New Architecture

As initially mentioned Audit Vault and Database Firewall are moving closer. Oracle Audit Vault is now also the data storage and analysis platform for the Oracle Database Firewall. Former Database Firewall Management Server is eliminated and thus is replaced with Oracle Audit Vault.

OverviewAVDF

An important note here is that Oracle Audit Vault can not be installed on different platforms as before. It is rather a software appliance like the Oracle Database Firewall. The license for each Oracle Audit Vault and Oracle Database Firewall includes always a license for Oracle Enterprise Linux as well. To install only the appropriate hardware is required. This can be a virtual or a physical host. To setup my test environment, I’ve use as usual virtual servers.

Oracle AVDF Requirements

To install Oracle AVDF the following minimal Hardware Requirements must be met. See as the online installation guide for more details on the installation requirements in particular for the supported secured target products (agents).

  • x86 64-bit Server
  • 2 GB Ram
  • single hard drive 125 GB
  • 1 NIC for Audit Vault Server
  • 1 NIC for Database Firewall Proxy Mode
  • 2 NICs for Database Firewall DAM Mode (monitoring)
  • 3 NICs for Database Firewall DPE Mode (blocking)

In addition to the hardware the following software is required to begin the installation:

  • Oracle Linux Release 5 Update 8 for x86_64 (64 Bit) V31120-01 (3.7GB)
  • Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall (12.1.0.0.0) – Server V35715-01 (3.4GB)
  • Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall (12.1.0.0.0) – Database Firewall V35716-01 (3.1GB)

The server can not be used for other activities, setup of either Oracle Audit Vault or Oracle Database Firewall will completely reimage the server. But I’ll post more details on the installation later this month.

Resources

Links all around the new Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall…

4 thoughts on “New Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall”

  1. Mr. Kosal

    Dear all,

    I can’t download from Oracle edelivery, because of my country, so can you give other link?

    Thank you for accessing the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. Due to your country location, we are unable to process your request. If you have an active support contract, you may request physical media by either submitting a Service Request or calling Customer Support. If you wish to purchase or evaluate our products on a 30-day trial please contact the appropriate Sales Representative for your country.

    Best Regards,
    Kosal

  3. Trevor E.

    I like your brief presentation, compliments. Please you know how I can get a short strait forward documentation on installation and configuration of AVDF?

    Thanks
    Trevor

  4. Stefan Oehrli Post author

    Hi

    The installation of AVDF is quite strait forward you just have to boot from the ISO, provide a passphrase for the installation and configure the management interface. After a reboot you can access the Webinterface over the IP you configured before. For the first login you have to specify the passphrase. Afterwards you can login as AVADMIN or AVAUDITOR. The initial Setup is described in Installing Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall Software. I’ll try to write a short blog post how I’ve setup my AVDF Test environment in a couple of days.

    Regards
    Stefan

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