Information Technology, Control, Audit and Security Experience

Hard Drive failures can be a pain as more often than not, data is always lost in the process. I have had some hard drives carelessly fail without notice thus loosing data in the range of 1Tb (1 Terabyte) . As frustrating as it was then it could actually have been avoided if I was smart enough to leverage on S.M.A.R.T Before going to this S.M.A.R.T stuff lets understand why Hard Disk Drive fail. Why Hard Disk Drive fail Hard drive can fail due to the following reasons: Magnetic coating failure: Data is stored on the Disk drive through magnetic patterns created by the Disk drive head. Magnetic coating failure could be as a result of a manufacturing defect or ageing of the HDD. Overheating of the drive could also be a key reason for the magnetic coating failure. Head crash: This happens if the hard drive is violently moved during usage. It could be as a result of a drop. Laptop HDDs are more prone to this type of failure. Static Friction issues: Over time the movement of ...

Oracle database is the most widely used database by most if not all organizations worldwide. From keeping records of customer data in banks, hospitals etc, subscriber data and call logs by telecommunication companies to as big as keeping the entire identity record of citizens of a nation.  Because of its popularity of usage, it has become a target for malicious entities to attempt a compromise on the database with the hope of:     1.  Stealing sensitive information,     2.  Maliciously altering sensitive data,     3.  Performing unauthorized data modification,     4.  Denying access to original owners (DOS) And the list goes on. This post will focus on how you can effectively audit an oracle database in order to properly protect it from external and internal attacks and misuse. Examples on this post will be based on Oracle Database versions 11g r2 So let’s begin

Preventing attacks to the database is the only approach to securing the database. Detecting potential attacks is also as important after all, the best security in the world is not going to stop every attacker. This is where the advantage of auditing comes to play. Auditing allows us to monitor the environment and identify potential attacks. This post will be based on Oracle 11g. Basically an Oracle 11g database supports four levels of auditing which we will discuss in a moment.

As an IT control officer or an IT auditor you will at one time have the challenging opportunity of reviewing and evaluating the controls of your organisation's Oracle E-Business suite. This could really be a daunting task mostly if you have NOT been trained on Oracle E-Business suite administration. It can a times, presents itself as a complex application. This was my position at my workplace. I had to research and build a suitable control work plan/audit plan which of course  I will gladly share. Please note that this is compilation based on research and actual experience. I will however appreciate positive and constructive criticism/feedback on this post.

Of course we all know what an Index is and how it is used. We are already familiar with its usage while reading books of large page volumes. We also know how ridiculous it would look to index for example, a 5 page booklet. Well indexing also applies to tables in Oracle database and very much every other databases pout there. Indexes are objects in the database that provides a mapping of all the values in a table column, along with the ROWIDs for all rows in the table that contains the value for the column. A ROWID is a unique identifier for a row in an oracle database table. An example of a rowid is the matriculation number of a student in a particular school. Hence Indexes however are used to make searches on tables faster. It is mostly not needed on a small table as its effect will not be seen. There are 2 types of indexes: ·          B*Tree ·          Bitmap Let’s look at them one...

Have you ever wondered how bank account numbers have been created in such a way that no two people can have the same account number? Better still how about Identity numbers like university matriculation number, staff id or Passport numbers. How are they generated without the possibility of a duplication?  This is made possible because of an object that does the tracking called a SEQUENCE.

In this post I will be sharing with you the basics on how to create and manage views on an oracle database. Views are logical tables based on the images of one or more tables in a database. Views form part of the objects created and managed in a schema. A schema is a collection of all objects owned by a particular user views being one of them When a user is created, the schema for the user is automatically created. Let’s now understand how Views are created and managed. Note  This tutorial will be done using SQLPLUS command prompt. Click here to view this tutorial using Oracle LIVE SQL