NCSC Cloud Security Principles
NCSC Cloud Security Principles
1 National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) Cloud Security Principles and Implementation in Oracle Cloud | Version 2.1
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This document is for informational purposes only and is intended solely to assist you in planning for the
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or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing
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Table of Contents
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Introduction to Using the Cloud Security Principles
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) published a collection of cloud security guidance that is intended to help
you assess the security of a cloud service. The 14 Cloud Security Principles, taken as a whole, are intended to be used
as a framework for evaluating the security of any cloud service provider. See details and context of the 14 Cloud
Security Principles at https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/cloud-security/implementing-the-cloud-security-
principles.
Your security responsibility might vary depending on the type of services involved. As a buyer, you bear responsibility
when using infrastructure as a service (IaaS). NCSC has published a specific guide for IaaS: Managing your
responsibilities.
This technical brief is intended to provide you with an understanding of the following information:
How Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s administrative, physical, and technical safeguards are aligned with NCSC
Cloud Security Principles
How the shared security responsibility model works based on the NCSC Cloud Security Principles
How you can approach information security risk management and implementation of the NCSC Cloud
Security Principles guidance using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services
Analytics: oracle.com/business-analytics
Compute: oracle.com/cloud/compute
Database: oracle.com/database
Integration: oracle.com/integration
Storage: oracle.com/cloud/storage
Oracle deploys cloud in data centre regions. Availability domains and three separate fault domains per data centre
help ensure application availability; low-latency and high-bandwidth interconnect enables zero-data-loss
architectures for applications such as Oracle Database and high availability for scale-out technologies such as
Cassandra.
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Data regions in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) are in the following cities:
For a complete list of regions and services available by region, see oracle.com/cloud/architecture-and-regions.
NCSC Cloud Security Principles: Customer Considerations and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Implementation
The shared responsibility model outlines Oracle’s responsibility to maintain a secure and continuously available
service and the customer’s responsibility to ensure secure use of the service.
Oracle Responsibilities
The shared responsibility model outlines the cloud service provider’s responsibility to maintain a secure and highly
available service. Oracle provides security controls for cloud infrastructure and operations, such as cloud operator
controls, infrastructure security patching, and data centre facility security. Controls that are part of a customer
solution provided by OCI or another Oracle division remain the responsibility of the provider or are governed by the
delivery agreements that OCI makes with the users of OCI.
Customer Responsibilities
Customers are responsible for securely configuring, deploying, and managing their cloud resources and workloads.
OCI customers may be platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) providers, or implement hybrid
on-premises/cloud architectures or hybrid cloud infrastructure with more than one provider. In these situations, the
shared responsibilities become broader and more complex, and customers should remain aware of responsibility for
components when they are passed through to other parties.
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With the cloud security shared responsibility model in mind, the following sections outline each of the 14 Cloud
Security Principles described by the NCSC. Information about both customer considerations and OCI implementation
is detailed for each principle, organised under the following areas:
Considerations: Within the NCSC guide, “Implementing the Cloud Security Principles”, these considerations
are defined as “goals” that the customer (buyer) should be confident in when analysing and using a cloud
service.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure control or feature: Details on the various processes, security controls, internal
standards, and additional functionality offered to the customer (buyer) to enable secure architecture specific
to the nature of each Cloud Security Principle.
Depending on the considerations for each given principle, the OCI control or feature focuses on the services where
the security features are implemented.
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Cloud Security Principle 1: Data in Transit Protection
User data transiting networking should be adequately protected against tampering and eavesdropping.
• For general information about getting started with file systems, see Overview of File Storage.
• For more information about the Vault service, see Overview of Vault.
• For more information about securing your file system, see About Security and the Securing File Storage reference
in the Security Guide.
Network Security
You are responsible for securely configuring network elements such as virtual networking, load balancing, DNS, and
gateways. Oracle is responsible for providing a secure network infrastructure.
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CONSIDERATIONS ORACLE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE CONTROL OR FEATURE
Private Connections
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect offers a dedicated, private connection between the customer’s data centre
and OCI. FastConnect provides higher-bandwidth options, and a more reliable and consistent networking experience
compared to internet-based connections.
With FastConnect, the customer can choose to use private peering, public peering, or both.
• Private peering: To extend existing infrastructure into a virtual cloud network (VCN) in OCI (for example, to
implement a hybrid cloud or a migration scenario). Communication across the connection is with IPv4 private
addresses (typically RFC 1918).
• Public peering: To access public services in OCI without using the internet—for example, Object Storage, the
Console and APIs, or public load balancers in the customer’s VCN. Communication across the connection is with
IPv4 public IP addresses. Without FastConnect, the traffic destined for public IP addresses would be routed over
the internet. With FastConnect, that traffic goes over a private physical connection.
All the customer's compute and storage resources are enclosed in a VCN, which the customer configures and controls.
The VCN is a software-defined network, resembling the on-premises physical network used by customers to run their
workloads. Formulating a VCN security architecture includes tasks such as these:
• Formulating VCN and load balancer firewalls using VCN security lists.
• Determining the type of VCN external connectivity, whether internet, on-premises network, peered VCN, or a
combination of these.
• Using virtual network security appliances (for example, next-generation firewalls, IDs).
• Creating DNS zones and mappings. An important security consideration in load balancers is using customer TLS
certificates to configure TLS connections to a customer's VCN.
The customer’s VCN can be partitioned into subnets, each mapped to an availability domain. Instances inside private
subnets cannot have public IP addresses. Instances inside public subnets can optionally have public IP addresses at
the customer’s discretion.
Security Lists
Security lists provide stateful and stateless firewall capability to control network access to a customer’s instances. A
security list is configured at the subnet level and enforced at the instance level. The customer can apply multiple
security lists to a subnet. A network packet is allowed if it matches any rule in the security lists.
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Gateways let resources in a VCN communicate with destinations outside the VCN. The gateways include the following
ones:
• Internet gateway for internet connectivity (for resources with public IP addresses)
• NAT gateway for internet connectivity without exposing the resources to incoming internet connections (for
resources with private IP addresses)
• Dynamic routing gateway (DRG) for connectivity to networks outside the VCN's region (for example, the on-
premises network by way of an IPSec VPN or FastConnect, or a peered VCN in another region)
• Service gateway for private connectivity to public OCI services such as Object Storage
• Local peering gateway (LPG) for connectivity to a peered VCN in the same region
Route tables control how traffic is routed from the customer’s VCN's subnets to destinations outside the VCN. Routing
targets can be VCN gateways or a private IP address in the VCN.
For more information, see the following topics:
• Configuring IPsec
• In which countries your data will be The Oracle Services Privacy Policy and Data Processing Agreement for Oracle Services provide transparency about
stored, processed, and managed. Oracle’s overall approach to the handling of your data. However, as a cloud provider, Oracle generally has no insight
You should also consider how this into the data that you store and process in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or whether it is personal data that belongs to a
affects your compliance with particular end user. In this context, Oracle has no relationship with your end users and therefore does not inform them
relevant legislation, e.g., Data about any of your data processing details. Only you can be transparent to your end users about how their data is
Protection Act (DPA). processed.
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CONSIDERATIONS ORACLE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE CONTROL OR FEATURE
Data Localization
Data localization laws, also known as data residency laws, may require certain categories of data to be stored in a
specific country. Only you can take steps to familiarize yourself with the requirements of the data localization laws or
regulations that may apply to your data, and then determine what you must do to comply.
Oracle generally has no insight into the data that you store and process in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or whether it is
in categories covered by data localization laws. The location transparency described in the previous section may help
with data localization because you will always know the geographic location of your data in OCI. Oracle continues to
open new data centre regions in countries around the world, which allows more of its customers to store their data
within their own country.
See “Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Centre Regions” at oracle.com/cloud/architecture-and-regions.html.
For more information about data protection principles and compliance, see Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and the GDPR
at oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/oci-gdpr.pdf.
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CONSIDERATIONS ORACLE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE CONTROL OR FEATURE
Oracle Cloud data centres align with Uptime Institute and Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) ANSI/TIA-
942-A Tier 3 or Tier 4 standards and follow a N2 redundancy methodology for critical equipment operation. Data
centres housing OCI services use redundant power sources and maintain generator backups in case of widespread
electrical outage. Server rooms are closely monitored for air temperature and humidity, and fire-suppression systems
are in place. Data centre staff are trained in incident response and escalation procedures to address security and
availability events that may arise.
• You, the customer, are responsible for securing your workloads and securely configuring services (such as
compute, network, storage, and database). See “Shared Security Model” at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Security/Concepts/security_overview.htm#Shared_Security_Model.
• Oracle Security Zones: Special compartments designed to enforce implicit and explicit security policies.
• Oracle Cloud Guard: A scalable data processing security service that acts as the command centre for Oracle cloud
security posture management. Oracle Cloud Guard gives a comprehensive picture of the security and risk posture
of a customer’s tenants in OCI.
For more information, see Oracle Cloud Guard and Oracle Security Zones.
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Encryption
The encryption described in this section occurs by default regardless of the nature of the underlying data. OCI does
not have insight into the nature of your data, whether it is personal data, sensitive data, or otherwise.
• Block Volume: Data is encrypted at rest by default, and the backups are also encrypted in Object Storage.
See “Block Volume Encryption” at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Block/Concepts/overview.htm#BlockVolumeEncryption.
• Object Storage: Each object is encrypted with its own key. Encryption is enabled by default.
See “Object Storage Features” at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Object/Concepts/objectstorageoverview.htm#features.
• Bare metal and Virtual Machine DB system: Encryption of user-created tablespaces is enabled by default using
Transparent Data Encryption (TDE).
See “Transparent Data Encryption” (Bare metal/VM) at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Database/Tasks/configuringDB.htm?#Transparent_Data_Encryption.
• Exadata Cloud Service: All new tablespaces created by the customer in the Exadata Cloud Service database are
encrypted by default.
See “Managing Tablespace Encryption” (Exadata) at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Database/Tasks/exaconfiguring.htm#Managing_Tablespace_Encryption.
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Vault
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Vault key management service provides centralized management of the encryption of
customer data with keys that you control. It can be used for the following tasks:
• Storage media which has held your OCI provides deletion capability in all its data storage services. For more information about each service, see the
data is sanitised or securely following resources:
destroyed at the end of its life.
• Block Volume: See “Deleting A Volume” at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Block/Tasks/deletingavolume.htm.
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You should be sufficiently confident Decommissioning Servers and Other Computing Resources
that:
Oracle’s Media Sanitisation and Disposal Policy defines requirements for removal of information from electronic
• All equipment potentially storage media (sanitisation) and disposal of information that is no longer required to protect against unauthorized
containing your data, credentials, retrieval and reconstruction of confidential data. Electronic storage media includes laptops, hard drives, storage
or configuration information for devices, and removable media such as tape.
the service is identified at the end
of its life (or prior to being Data Sanitisation and Equipment Disposal
recycled).
Oracle’s Media Sanitisation and Disposal Policy sets forth the requirements for removal of information from electronic
• Any components containing storage media including sanitisation and disposal of information to address scenarios such as end-of-life systems,
sensitive data are sanitised, system repair and reuse, and vendor replacement in conjunction with associated safe data handling.
removed, or destroyed as
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure follows National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-88
appropriate.
Guidelines on Media Sanitization, which addresses ensuring that data is not unintentionally released. These guidelines
• Accounts or credentials specific to encompass both electronic and physical sanitisation.
redundant equipment are revoked
to reduce their value to an attacker. Service Termination
If you terminate your OCI service subscription, Oracle will make your data residing in the production Cloud Services
environment available for you to retrieve. After the retrieval period, your data will be deleted. Details about this
retrieval period are described in section 6, “Oracle Cloud Suspension and Termination Policy”. See “Oracle Cloud
Hosting and Delivery Policies” at oracle.com/corporate/contracts/cloud-services/hosting-delivery-policies.html#hd.
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CONSIDERATIONS ORACLE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE CONTROL OR FEATURE
• You should be sufficiently The following OCI features help with data availability.
confident that the availability
commitments of the service, Availability Domains and Fault Domains
including their ability to recover
A customer’s tenancy is created in the available home region of their choice. Many OCI regions are composed of
from outages, meet your business
physically isolated and fault-tolerant availability domains. Customers can use these availability domains to build
needs.
replicated systems.
Fault domains are grouping of hardware and infrastructure within an availability domain. You can optionally specify
the fault domain for a new compute instance at launch time. This allows you to distribute your compute instances so
that they are not on the same physical hardware within a single availability domain. For more information, see the
following topics:
Backups
The following flexible data storage backup options are available:
• Block Volume: Block Volume backups can be manual or scheduled, incremental or full. Cross-region backups can
be used for business continuity, disaster recovery, and application migration and expansion. Policy-based
backups have different backup frequencies and retention periods. These backups are encrypted in Object
Storage. See “Overview of Block Volume Backups” at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Block/Concepts/blockvolumebackups.htm.
• Object Storage: Object Storage replication aids in disaster recovery efforts, and addresses data redundancy
compliance requirements. Copies of objects can be made to other buckets in the same region or across regions.
See “Using Replication” (Object Storage) at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Object/Tasks/usingreplication.htm and
“Copying Objects” at docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Object/Tasks/copyingobjects.htm.
• Bare Metal and Virtual Machine DB Systems: Backups can go to Object Storage or local storage; Data Guard can
also be used for data protection and availability. See “Backing Up a Database” (Bare metal/VM) at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Database/Tasks/backingup.htm and
“Using Data Guard” (Bare metal/VM) at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Database/Tasks/usingdataguard.htm.
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• Exadata Cloud Service: Exadata database backups go to Object Storage and can be managed or unmanaged.
Data Guard can also be used for data protection and availability. See the following topics:
“Managing Exadata Database Backups” (Oracle managed) at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Database/Tasks/exabackingup.htm
“Managing Exadata Database Backups by Using bkup_api” at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Database/Tasks/exabackingupBKUPAPI.htm
“Using Oracle Data Guard with Exadata Cloud Service” at
docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Database/Tasks/exausingdataguard.htm
Learn more about high-availability solutions for OCI at docs.oracle.com/en/solutions/design-ha.
• Understand the types of user you The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure architecture was designed for security of the platform through isolated network
share the service or platform with. virtualization, highly secure firmware installation, a controlled physical network, and network segmentation.
• Have confidence that the service OCI benefits from tiered defences and highly secure operations that span from the physical hardware in our data
provides sufficient separation of centres to the web layer, in addition to the protections and controls available in our cloud. Many of these protections
your data and service from other also work with third-party clouds and on-premises solutions to help secure modern enterprise workloads and data
users of the service. where they reside.
• Have confidence that management Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Security Architecture describes how OCI meets the security requirements of enterprises
of your service is keep separate and customers who run critical and sensitive workloads. It details how security is fundamental to the architecture, data
from other users. centre design, personnel selection, and processes for provisioning, using, certifying, and maintaining OCI.
Security of an OCI tenancy is based on a combination of factors. The following steps provide high-level guidelines for
configuring security of a tenancy.
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CONSIDERATIONS ORACLE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE CONTROL OR FEATURE
• Formulating authentication mechanisms (for example, Console access using a password, API access using API
keys, and an auth token for object store) for the IAM users created
• Formulating VCN and load balancer firewalls using VCN security lists.
• Determining the type of VCN external connectivity, whether internet, on-premises network, peered VCN, or a
combination of these.
• Using virtual network security appliances (for example, next-generation firewalls, IDs).
• Creating DNS zones and mappings. An important security consideration in load balancers is using customer
Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates to configure TLS connections to customer’s VCN.
• Bare metal instances have no Oracle-managed software running on them, which means that the instances and
data stored (in memory and local drives) are completely controlled by the customer.
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• VM instances are architected with least-privilege mechanisms and with corporate industry-leading hypervisor
security best practices.
Depending on security and performance requirements, customers have a choice of using bare metal and VM
instances to run their application workloads in their tenancy. It is imperative to securely configure compute instances
to maintain the security of customer applications running on them.
OCI API Audit logs record calls to APIs (for example, through the Console, SDKs, CLIs, and custom clients using the
APIs) as log events. The API Audit logs are always on by default and cannot be turned off. These logs are available to
customers for 90 days, with a retention period configurable up to 365 days. Information in the API Audit logs show
what time API activity occurred, the source of the activity, the target of the activity, what the action was, and what the
response was. Oracle recommends that customers periodically review the API Audit logs to ensure that they are in
accordance with actions they took on their tenancy resources.
For more information, see Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Security Features.
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Cloud Security Principle 4: Governance Framework
The service provider should have a security governance framework which coordinates and directs its management of the service and information within it. Any
technical controls deployed outside of this framework will be fundamentally undermined.
• You should have sufficient Global Information Security is responsible for security oversight, compliance and enforcement, conducting
confidence that the service has a information-security assessments, leading the development of information security policy and strategy, and training
governance framework and and awareness at the corporate level. This organisation serves as the primary contact for security incident response,
processes which are appropriate providing overall direction for incident prevention, identification, investigation, and resolution.
for your intended use.
Programs within Global Information Security are dedicated to preserving the confidentiality, integrity, and availability
of Oracle information assets and the information assets entrusted to Oracle, including a focus on the following
activities:
• Defining global corporate technical standards to enable security, privacy, and compliance
• Contributing to industry standards such as those issued by the international Organization for Standardization
(ISO) and United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
• Assisting lines of business (LOBs) security organisations with fostering a culture of security across regions and
functional area
• Identifies and addresses corporate security requirements across the global organisation
• Nominates and delegates LOBs, organisations, and teams to deliver worldwide security standards, practices, and
policies
• Communicates recommendations and action plans to senior management across all LOBs
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CONSIDERATIONS ORACLE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE CONTROL OR FEATURE
• Communicating current, strategic, and emerging risks to operational and leadership teams
• Threat intelligence
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Cloud Security Principle 5: Operational Security
The service needs to be operated and managed securely in order to impede, detect or prevent attacks. Good operational security should not require complex,
bureaucratic, time consuming or expensive processes.
• The status, location and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has a comprehensive change management process as a core requirement of its
configuration of service commitment to security, availability, and confidentiality. The change management process is reviewed annually, at a
components (both hardware and minimum, and outlines the processes and procedures to be followed for each change.
software) are tracked throughout
The process incorporates segregation of duties and requires changes to be approved and tested prior to
their lifetime.
implementation. All change requests are documented in an electronic, access-controlled ticketing system. The
• Changes to the service are workflow prevents the ticket from being moved into the scheduled or implementation phase without the required
assessed for potential security review and approval of child tickets being in the closed state.
impact. Then managed and
All changes must be peer reviewed prior to implementation. The reviewer is typically a member of the same team with
tracked through to completion.
knowledge of the in-scope system service who can technically review the change for accuracy and potential issues.
Changes that have the potential to have a significant impact on customers are also required to have a documented
approval from the manager of the team managing the service.
• Potential new threats, The Oracle Critical Patch Update (CPU) and Security Alert Implementation Policy require the deployment of the Oracle
vulnerabilities, or exploitation CPU and Security Alert patches as well as associated recommendations within a reasonable time of their release.
techniques which could affect your Additional policies require remediation of vulnerabilities in non-Oracle technology.
service are assessed and corrective
The Oracle Server Security Policy requires servers (both physical and virtual) owned and managed by Oracle and
action is taken.
servers managed by third parties for Oracle to be physically and logically secured in order to prevent unauthorized
• Relevant sources of information access to the servers and associated information assets.
relating to threat, vulnerability, and
Penetration tests of the system are conducted at least annually. A commercial vulnerability scanning tool is configured
exploitation techniques are
to scan all external IP addresses and internal nodes at least quarterly. The results of vulnerability scans and
monitored by the service provider.
penetration tests are reviewed by management. Vulnerabilities and threats are assessed, documented in a ticket, and
• The severity of threats and tracked through resolution.
vulnerabilities is considered within
the context of the service and this Security Event and Information Monitoring
information is used to prioritise the
OCI has deployed a security information and event monitoring (SIEM) solution that ingests and stores security-related
implementation of mitigations.
logs and alerts from networking devices, hosts, and other components within the infrastructure. OCI’s Detection and
Response Team (DART) monitors the SIEM for event correlations and other relevant detection scenarios 24x7x365 to
defend and protect against unauthorised intrusions and activity in the production environment.
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• The service generates adequate Oracle employs intrusion-detection systems within the Oracle intranet to provide continuous surveillance for
audit events to support effective intercepting and responding to security events as they are identified. Oracle uses a network-based monitoring
identification of suspicious activity. approach to detect attacks on open firewall ports within Oracle's intranet. Events are analysed using signature
detection, which is a pattern matching of environment settings and user activities against a database of known
• These events are analysed to attacks. Oracle updates the signature database as soon as new releases become available for commercial distribution.
identify potential compromises or
Alerts are forwarded to Oracle's IT security for review and response to potential threats.
inappropriate use of your service.
You are responsible for securely configuring and managing your compute (virtual hosts, containers), storage (object,
• The service provider takes prompt local storage, block volumes), and platform (database configuration) services.
and appropriate action to address
incidents. Monitoring and Protection of Audit Log Information
Oracle logs certain security-related activities on operating systems, applications, databases, and network devices.
Systems are configured to log access to Oracle programs, as well as system alerts, console messages, and system
errors. Oracle implements controls designed to protect against operational problems, including log file media
becoming exhausted, failing to record events, or logs being overwritten.
Oracle reviews logs for forensic purposes and incidents, and identified anomalous activities feed into the security-
incident management process. Access to security logs is provided based on need-to-know and least privilege. Where
possible, log files are protected by strong cryptography in addition to other security controls, and access is monitored.
Logs generated by internet-accessible systems are relocated to systems that are not internet accessible.
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CONSIDERATIONS ORACLE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE CONTROL OR FEATURE
Network Protection
Oracle’s network protections include solutions designed to provide continuity of service, defending against Denial of
Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
Events are analysed using signature detection, which is a pattern matching of environment settings and user activities
against a database of known attacks. Oracle updates the signature database frequently.
You should have confidence that: Reflecting the recommended practices in prevalent security standards issued by the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO), the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and other industry
• Incident management processes
sources, Oracle has implemented a wide variety of preventive, detective, and corrective security controls with the
are in place for the service and are
objective of protecting information assets.
actively deployed in response to
security incidents.
Incident Response
• Predefined processes are in place
OCI has incident response mechanisms and processes designed to detect and respond to (potential) security incidents
for responding to common types
within the security environment that we implement. Oracle notifies you, the customer, if a security incident was
of incident and attack.
confirmed to have led to a personal information breach, following the terms described in the “Incident Management
• A defined process and contact and Breach Notification” section of the Data Processing Agreement for Oracle Cloud Services.
route exist for reporting of security As a controller, you must determine whether any of your end users or regulators must be notified of a personal
incidents by consumers and information breach. Customers may have responsibilities for incident and personal information breach detection
external entities. within the security environment that they control. For example, OCI cannot detect whether a user’s login to a
• Security incidents of relevance to customer’s tenancy was unauthorized. Cloud Guard and the Audit service (see the following section) can help you
you will be reported in acceptable monitor software, depending on the functionality that you have implemented on the Oracle Infrastructure platform.
timescales and formats.
Audit Service
The Audit service logs calls to the OCI public API, whether those calls originated from the Console, SDK, or CLI. Audit
log contents include the activity that occurred, the user who initiated it, the date and time of the request, the source IP
address, the user agent, and the HTTP headers of the request. Data from these logged events can help you safeguard
your data by enabling you to monitor activity within your tenancy. This logging occurs automatically, and you can
setup the Audit log retention period.
See “Overview of Audit” at docs.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Audit/Concepts/auditoverview.htm and “Setting Audit Log
Retention Period” at docs.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Audit/Tasks/settingretentionperiod.htm.
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Notifications
Oracle will notify you of a confirmed Personal Information Breach without undue delay but at the latest within 24
hours. As information regarding the breach is collected or otherwise reasonably becomes available to Oracle, Oracle
will also provide you with the following information:
• The measures taken to mitigate any possible adverse effects and prevent a recurrence
• Where possible, information about the types of personal information that were the subject of the breach
Oracle maintains high standards for ethical business conduct at every level of the organisation and at every location
You should have confidence that:
where Oracle does business around the world. These standards apply to Oracle employees, contractors, and
• The level of security screening temporary employees, and cover legal and regulatory compliance and business conduct and relationships. Oracle
conducted on service provider staff requires its employees to receive training in ethics and business conduct every two years.
with access to information, or with
ability to affect the service, is Emphasis on Personnel Security
appropriate.
Oracle emphasises personnel security strongly. The company has ongoing initiatives intended to help minimize risks
• The minimum number of people associated with human error, theft, fraud, and misuse of facilities. These initiatives include personnel screening,
necessary have access to confidentiality agreements, security awareness education and training, and enforcement of disciplinary actions.
information or could affect the
service. Employee Screening
In the US, Oracle uses an external screening agency to perform preemployment background investigations for newly
hired US personnel. Personnel screening in other countries varies according to local laws, employment regulations,
and local Oracle policy. Learn more about Oracle’s global background check practices.
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Commitment to Confidentiality
Oracle employees are required to maintain the confidentiality of customer data. Employees must sign a confidentiality
agreement and comply with company policies concerning protection of confidential information as part of their initial
terms of employment. Oracle obtains a written confidentiality agreement from each subcontractor before that
subcontractor provides services.
• New and evolving threats are Oracle has formal programs to guide development of software and hardware solutions. Encompassing every phase of
reviewed, and the service improved the product development life cycle, Oracle Software Security Assurance is Oracle’s methodology for building security
in line with them. into the design, building, testing, and maintenance of its products. Oracle’s formal programs also focus on security
requirements and operations for Oracle Cloud.
• Development is carried out in line
with industry good practice
Software Development Lifecycle
regarding secure design, coding,
testing, and deployment. All Oracle Cloud Infrastructure software development teams follow requirements of OSSA and Oracle Secure Coding
Standards. Teams must document their software development life cycle (SDLC), including secure code development
• Configuration management practices, peer review, change management for introducing new code into production, and the requirement for annual
processes are in place to ensure secure code development training. OCI software development teams must review and update their respective SDLC at
the integrity of the solution least annually.
through development, testing, and
deployment.
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Configuration Management
OCI uses industry-standard configuration management tools to manage packages, system configurations, and service
configurations on long-lived hosts.
Oracle’s colocation facility providers only supply power, physical security, and environmental controls for OCI.
Colocation facility providers are not permitted to have access to OCI’s services or customer applications, workloads, or
data.
You understand and accept: Oracle Supply Chain Security and Assurance
• How your information is shared Oracle has formal policies and procedures designed to ensure the safety of its supply chain. See Oracle Supply Chain
with, or accessible to, third-party Security and Assurance. These policies and procedures explain how Oracle selects third-party hardware and software
suppliers and their supply chains. that may be embedded in Oracle products, as well as how Oracle assesses third-party technology used in Oracle’s
corporate and cloud environments. Additionally, Oracle has policies and procedures governing the development,
• How the service provider’s testing, maintenance, and distribution of Oracle software and hardware to mitigate the risks associated with the
procurement processes place
malicious alteration of these products before purchase and installation by customers.
security requirements on third-
party suppliers. Oracle also has formal requirements for its suppliers and partners to confirm they protect the Oracle and third-party
data and assets entrusted to them. The Supplier Information and Physical Security Standards detail the security
• How the service provider manages controls that Oracle’s suppliers and partners are required to adopt when performing the following actions:
security risks from third-party
suppliers. • Accessing Oracle and Oracle customers’ facilities, networks, or information systems
• Handling Oracle confidential information and Oracle hardware assets placed in their custody
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• How the service provider manages In addition, Oracle suppliers are required to adhere to the Oracle Supplier Code of Ethics and Business Conduct, which
the conformance of their suppliers includes policies related to the security of confidential information and intellectual property of Oracle and third parties.
with security requirements. For more information about suppliers, see “Oracle Suppliers” at oracle.com/corporate/suppliers.html.
• Requiring that hardware supply chain suppliers have quality control processes and measurement systems
• Requiring that hardware supply chain suppliers comply with applicable Oracle requirements and specifications
Supply availability, and continuity and resiliency in Oracle’s hardware supply chain, are addressed through a variety of
practices:
• Requiring suppliers to meet minimum purchases periods and provide end-of-life or end-of-support-life notice
• Requiring advance notification of product changes from suppliers so that Oracle can access and address any
potential impact
• Managing inventory availability affected by changes in market conditions and natural disaster
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Cloud Security Principle 9: Secure User Management
Your service provider should make the tools available for you to securely manage your use of the service. Management interfaces and procedures are a vital
part of the security barrier, preventing unauthorised access and alteration of the customer’s resources, applications and data.
You should have sufficient confidence Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Identity and Access Management (IAM) service lets you control who has access to your
that: cloud resources. You can control what type of access a group of users has and to which specific resources.
• Only authorized individuals from When a customer joins OCI, a tenancy is created. A tenancy is a virtual construct that contains all the OCI resources
your organisation can use those that belong to the customer. The administrator of the tenancy can create users and groups and assign them least-
mechanisms to affect your use and privileged access to resources that are partitioned into compartments.
the service.
Separation and Isolation
A compartment is a group of resources that can be managed as a single logical unit, providing a streamlined way to
manage large infrastructure. For example, a customer can create a compartment (HR-Compartment) to host a specific
set of cloud network, compute instances, and storage volumes necessary to host its HR applications. Compartments
are a fundamental component of OCI for organizing and isolating cloud resources.
Customers use compartments to clearly separate resources for the purposes of isolation (separating the resources for
one project or business unit from another). A common approach is to create a compartment for each major part of an
organisation. Unlike most OCI services that are regionally scoped, IAM resources are global. Customers can have a
single tenancy across multiple regions.
You should: Access control refers to the policies, procedures, and tools that govern access to and use of resources. Examples of
resources include a physical server, a file, a directory, a service running an operating system, a table in a database, or a
• Have confidence that other users
network protocol.
cannot access, modify, or
otherwise affect your service • Least privilege is a system-oriented approach in which users’ permissions and system functionality are carefully
management. evaluated and access is restricted to the resources required for use or systems to perform their duties.
• Manage the risks of privileged • Default-deny is a network-oriented approach that implicitly denies the transmission of all traffic, and then
access using a system such as the specifically allows only required traffic based on protocol, port, source, and destination.
“principle of least privilege”.
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Privilege Management
Authorisation depends on successful authentication because controlling access to specific resources depends on
establishing an entity’s or individual’s identity. All Oracle authorization decisions for granting, approval, and review of
access are based on the following principles:
• Need to know: Does the user require this access for their job function?
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Cloud Security Principle 10: Identity and Authentication
All access to service interfaces should be constrained to authenticated and authorised individuals.
Least-Privilege Access
Unnecessary or out-of-date permissions pose a significant threat. Attackers can gain access to them and use them to
move throughout a system. To reduce the risk from overly permissioned users or applications, we use the principle of
least-privilege access when granting access to production systems. We periodically review the approved lists of service
team members and revoke access if no justifiable need for access exists.
Access to production systems requires multifactor authentication (MFA). The Security team grants MFA tokens and
disables the tokens of inactive members. All access to production systems is logged, and the logs are kept for security
analysis.
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Cloud Security Principle 11: External Interface Protection
All external or less trusted interfaces of the service should be identified and appropriately defended.
You: The customer is responsible for the physical security of computing resources within their own operating environment.
With respect to logical interface security, all of the customer's compute and storage resources are enclosed in a virtual
• Understand what physical and
cloud network (VCN), which the customer configures and controls. Additionally, the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
logical interfaces information is
Domain Name System (DNS) service provides dynamic, static, and recursive DNS solutions for enterprise customers.
available from, and how access to
The service connects visitors to customer websites and applications with fast and secure services.
data is controlled.
The DNS service operates on a global anycast network with 18 points of presence (POPs) on five continents and offers
• Have sufficient confidence that the fully redundant DNS constellations and multiple Tier 1 transit providers per POP. The solution provides a DNS-based
service identifies and authenticates
Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) protection and in-house security expertise that leverages a vast sensor network
users to an appropriate level over
that collects and analyses over 240 billion data points per day. The DNS service also fully supports the secondary DNS
those interfaces.
features to complement the customer’s existing DNS service, providing resiliency at the DNS layer.
The VCN is a software-defined network, resembling the on-premises physical network used by a customer to run their
workloads. Formulating a VCN security architecture includes tasks such as the following ones:
• Formulating VCN and local balancer firewalls using VCN security lists.
• Determining the type of VCN external connectivity, whether internet, on-premises network, peered VCN, or a
combination of these.
• Using virtual network security appliances (for example, next-generation firewalls, IDs).
• Creating DNS zones and mapping. An important security consideration in load balancers is using customer
Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates to configure TLS connections to a customer’s VCN.
The customer’s VCN can be partitioned into subnets, each mapped to an availability domain. Instances inside private
subnets cannot have public IP addresses. Instances inside public subnets can optionally have public IP addresses at
the customer’s discretion.
Security lists provide stateful and stateless firewall capability to control network access to the customer’s instances. A
security list is configured at the subnet level and enforced at the instance level. The customer can apply multiple
security lists to a subnet. A network packet is allowed if it matches any rule in the security lists.
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Gateways let resources in a VCN communicate with destinations outside the VCN. The gateways include the following
ones:
• Internet gateway for internet connectivity (for resources with public IP addresses)
• NAT gateway for internet connectivity without exposing the resources to incoming internet connections (for
resources with private IP addresses)
• Dynamic routing gateway (DRG) for connectivity to networks outside the VCN's region (for example, the on-
premise network by way of an IPSec VPN or FastConnect, or a peered VCN in another region)
• Service gateway for private connectivity to public OCI services such as Object Storage
• Local peering gateway (LPG) for connectivity to a peered VCN in the same region
Route tables control how traffic is routed from the customer’s VCN's subnets to destinations outside the VCN. Routing
targets can be VCN gateways or a private IP address in the VCN.
For more information, see OCI Security Features.
• Understand which service Access to network devices and servers that support the services requires Oracle users to use multifactor
administration model is being used authentication (MFA) and traverse three levels of access control.
by the service provider to manage
The first step in the authentication path is the Oracle Cloud Network Access (OCNA) VPN. OCNA is a multitiered
the service.
demilitarised zone (DMZ) environment inside a dedicated extranet that is isolated from Oracle's internal corporate
• Be content with any risks the network and VPNs for non-cloud services. It functions as a secure access gateway between the user and the target
service administration model in use device. OCNA is composed of a gateway subnet, a tools subnet, and a network subnet located in Oracle’s DMZ and is
brings to data or use of the service. protected by firewalls. Only approved engineers with a valid OCNA account can access OCNA.
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Two-factor authentication is required to authenticate to OCNA. When a user account is created, attributes are defined
to describe the specific entitlements that the user is authorised to access. The user is restricted to these resources
when connected. The user’s access must be approved by an appropriate approver before access is provisioned, and
access is revoked when the user is terminated. Before an endpoint can authenticate to the VPN, OCNA is configured to
complete a security posture check to determine whether the endpoint is running up-to-date antivirus software, has a
local firewall enabled, and is in line with Oracle policies regarding software updates.
The second step in the authentication path is authenticating to the relevant bastion server. Operator access is
permitted only from bastion servers. Bastion servers are permitted to accept connections only from OCNA subnets.
Access to bastion servers is controlled in the following ways:
• Oracle Identity Manager (OIM): Only approved engineers with the required OIM entitlement can access the
bastion servers. Before the entitlement can be provisioned, the user’s access must be approved by an appropriate
approver.
• SSH key: The public and private SSH key of authorised users is used in conjunction with the user’s UNIX username
and authenticated via LDAP. The user’s private key is stored on a virtual slot on the user’s token, which requires
two-factor authentication to access. The user’s corresponding public key is configured on the appropriate bastion
servers during the access provisioning process.
Users must meet both prerequisites to authenticate to a bastion server. Access to bastion servers is reviewed on a
quarterly basis. Inappropriate access identified during the review is investigated and revoked.
• APIs: The OCI APIs are typical REST APIs (docs.oracle.com/iaas/Content/API/Concepts/usingapi.htm) that use
HTTPS requests and responses.
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Cloud Security Principle 13: Audit Information for Users
The customer should be provided with the audit records needed to monitor access to the service and the data held within it. The type of audit information
available to the customer will have a direct impact on the ability to detect and respond to inappropriate or malicious activity within reasonable timescales.
You should be: The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Audit service automatically records calls to all supported OCI public API endpoints as
log events. Currently, all services support logging by Audit. The Object Storage service supports logging for bucket-
• Aware of the audit information that
related events, but not for object-related events.
will be provided, how and when it
will be made available, the format Log events recorded by the Audit service include API calls made by the OCI Console, CLI, SDKs, the customer’s own
of the data, and the retention custom clients, or other OCI services. Information in the logs shows what time API activity occurred, the source of the
period associated with it. activity, the target of the activity, what the action was, and what the response was.
• Confident that the audit Each log event includes a header ID, target resources, the timestamp of the recorded event, request parameters, and
information available will meet response parameters. The customer can view events logged by the Audit service by using the Console, API, or the Java
needs for investigating misuse or SDK. The customer can view events, copy the details of individual events, and analyse events or store them separately.
incidents. Data from events can be used to perform diagnostics, track resource usage, monitor compliance, and collect security-
related events.
For more information, see OCI Security Features.
You: Documentation for Launching, Configuring, Managing and Using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
• Understand any service Review the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation, especially the following topics, for information about
configuration options available and launching, configuring, managing, and using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services.
the security implications of choices.
• Key Concepts and Terminology
• Understand the security
• Security Guide
requirements of your use of the
service. • Security Services and Features
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NCSC Cloud Security Principles and Oracle Cloud
NCSC outlined several steps that you can take to gain confidence that the security measures that you and your
suppliers put in place are working effectively. The recommended approaches are not mutually exclusive. Many of the
steps can be combined to provide higher levels of confidence.
The following sections demonstrate how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure enables your organisation to build confidence in
cyber security.
Ernst & Young CertifyPoint BV (EYCP) audits OCI’s Information Security Management System (ISMS) and has
issued an ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certificate. In addition, EYCP has issued an ISO/IEC 27017:2015 certificate
addressing information security controls for cloud services and ISO/IEC 27018:2014 certificate addressing
relevant aspects of protection for personally identifiable information (PII) in public clouds acting as PII
processors. OCI’s scope for its ISMS is global in nature for both services and regions. Newly deployed services
and regions are brought into the ISMS scope upon deployment and are audited by EYCP within our 6 months
audit cadence, producing certificate updates by June and December each year.
Ernst & Young LLP examines OCI in accordance with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
(AICPA) Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements 18 (SSAE 18) and the International Auditing
and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) Internal Standard on Assurance Engagements 3000 (ISAE 3000),
and issues a System and Organization Control 2 (SOC 2) Type 2 report covering AICPA Trust Services Criteria
for controls relevant to security, confidentiality, and availability. OCI’s scope under these assurance programs
is global in nature for both services and regions. Newly deployed services and regions are aligned with the
appropriate security, confidentiality, and availability requirements upon deployment and are audited by Ernst
& Young LLP within our 6 months audit cadence, producing assurance reports by June and December each
year.
In addition, Ernst & Young LLP examines OCI in accordance with ISAE 3000 and issues a report addressing
relevant criteria found in the Bundesamt fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) Cloud Computing
Compliance Controls Catalog (C5). OCI’s scope under these assurance programs is global in nature for both
services and regions. Newly deployed services and regions are aligned with the appropriate C5 requirements
upon deployment and are audited by Ernst & Young LLP within our 6 months audit cadence, producing
assurance reports by June and December each year.
Schellman & Company LLC assesses OCI as a Level 1 service provider in accordance with the Payment Card
Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). OCI’s PCI DSS Attestation of Compliance (AOC) covers all 12 PCI
DSS requirements in relation to in-scope IaaS. OCI’s scope under PCI is global in nature for both services and
regions. Newly developed services and regions meet all applicable PCI DSS requirements upon deployment
and are audited by Schellman & Company LLC within our 6 months audit cadence, producing an AOC by
June and December each year.
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Secarma Ltd. performed an independent assessment of OCI’s cybersecurity practices and issued a Cyber
Essentials certificate. The scope of this certificate covers the services and regions within the UK.
OCI’s Cyber Essentials certification provides independent verification of cybersecurity safeguards from an accredited
certification body. The NCSC developed the Cyber Essentials scheme to provide clarity around the basic controls all
organisations should implement to mitigate risks from common internet-based threats. The scheme’s assurance
framework offers a mechanism for an organisation to demonstrate to customers and other interested parties that it
has relevant technical controls in place.
OCI’s SOC 2 Type 2 attestation provides the opinion of an independent auditor on the design effectiveness and
operating effectiveness of controls relevant to security, confidentiality, and availability. The description of OCI’s in-
scope services, tests of controls, and results of testing outlined in the report provides customers with assurance that
OCI’s service commitments and requirements were achieved based on the applicable AICPA Trust Services Principles
and Criteria.
OCI has implemented Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) into “business-as-usual” activities as
part of its overall security strategy. This enables OCI to continuously monitor the effectiveness of security controls
and to maintain a PCI DSS compliant environment in between annual PCI DSS assessments.
Oracle requires that external facing systems and cloud services undergo penetration testing performed by
independent security teams. Global Information Security’s Penetration Testing Team performs penetration tests and
provides oversight to all lines of business in instances where other internal security teams or an approved third-party
perform penetration testing activities. This oversight is designed to drive quality, accuracy, and consistency of
penetration testing activities and their associated methodology. All penetration test results and reports are reviewed
by Oracle’s corporate security teams to validate that an independent and thorough test has been performed.
Audit reports about Oracle Cloud services are periodically published by Oracle’s third-party auditors. Reports might
not be available for all services or all audit types, or at all times. Customers may request access to available audit
reports for a particular Oracle Cloud service by using available customer support tools or through Sales.
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Security Architecture Review
The Oracle corporate security architect helps set internal information-security technical direction and guides Oracle’s
IT departments and lines of business toward deploying information security and identity management solutions that
advance Oracle’s information security goals. The corporate security architect works with Global Information Security,
Global Product Security, and the development security leads to develop, communicate, and implement corporate
security architecture roadmaps.
Corporate security architecture manages a cross-organisation working group focused on security architecture, with
the goal of collaboratively guiding security for Oracle Cloud. Participation includes members from Oracle Cloud
development, operations, and governance teams.
Corporate Security Solution Assurance Process (CSSAP) is a security review process developed by Corporate Security
Architecture, Global Information Security, Global Product Security, Oracle Global IT, and Oracle’s IT organisations to
provide comprehensive information-security management review.
CSSAP helps to accelerate the delivery of innovative cloud solutions and corporate applications by requiring
appropriate reviews be done throughout the project life cycle:
Prereview: The risk management teams in each line of business must perform a preassessment of each
project using the approved template.
CSSAP review: The security architecture team reviews the submitted plans and performs a technical security
design review.
Security assessment review: Based on risk level, systems and applications undergo security verification
testing before production use.
The following Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation provides technical descriptions and guidance for
configuring and managing each service, including information about security features and best practices.
Oracle has corporate security practices that encompass all the functions related to security, safety, and business
continuity for Oracle’s internal operations and its provision of services to customers. They include a suite of internal
information security policies and different customer-facing security practices that apply to different services.
Oracle Cloud Security Practices describes Oracle’s controls designed to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and
availability of customer data and systems that are hosted in Oracle Cloud, accessed when providing cloud services, or
both. To find out more, see “Oracle Corporate Security Practices” at oracle.com/corporate/security-practices.
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Security in OCI is a shared responsibility between you and Oracle:
Oracle is responsible for the security of the underlying cloud infrastructure (such as data centre facilities, and
hardware and software systems). See “Oracle Corporate Security Practices” at
oracle.com/corporate/security-practices.
You, the customer, are responsible for securing your workloads and securely configuring services (such as
compute, network, storage, and database). See “Shared Security Model” at
docs.oracle.com/iaas/Content/Security/Concepts/security_overview.htm#Shared_Security_Model.
Oracle complies with the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework as set forth by the US Department of Commerce regarding
the collection, use, and retention of personal information transferred from the EU to the US. Oracle is also responsible
for ensuring that third parties who act as an agent on our behalf do the same.
Oracle has certified to the Department of Commerce that it adheres to the Privacy Shield Principles. If there is any
conflict between the terms in our privacy policy and the Privacy Shield Principles, the Privacy Shield Principles shall
govern. To learn more about the Privacy Shield program, and to view our certification, visit
https://www.privacyshield.gov/list.
For personal information received or transferred pursuant to the Privacy Shield Framework, Oracle is subject to the
regulatory enforcement powers of the US Federal Trade Commission.
Oracle continues to adhere to the underlying European privacy principles of the US-Swiss Safe Harbor for the
processing of Personal Information received from Switzerland. To learn more about the Safe Harbor program, and to
view our certification, visit https://safeharbor.export.gov/swisslist.aspx.
OCI is an IaaS product in which responsibility for data security and data privacy is shared between Oracle and its
customers. Oracle defines two broad categories of data in its interactions with customers:
Data about our customers: The contact and related information needed to operate an OCI account and bill
for services. The use of any personal information that we gather for purposes of account management is
governed by the “Oracle General Privacy Policy” at oracle.com/legal/privacy/privacy-policy.html.
Data stored by our customers: The data that customers store in OCI, such as files, documents, and
databases. We don’t have insight into the contents of this data. Our handling of this data is described by the
“Oracle Services Privacy Policy” at oracle.com/legal/privacy/services-privacy-policy.html and the “Data
Processing Agreement” for Oracle Services at oracle.com/corporate/contracts/cloud-
services/contracts.html#data-processing.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and the GDPR explains how the features and functionality of OCI can help customers meet
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements.
Oracle has standard contracts and policies that govern the terms, service descriptions, and delivery of cloud services.
To find out more, review the following documentation:
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