How Oracle NET Encryption Benefits Financial Institutions

The financial industry is known for its complexity. The nature of this business involves sensitive data, such as social security numbers, retirement plans and financial records. Locking this information down with the appropriate level of cyber security is crucial in a world where data breaches are commonplace.

Utilizing Oracle Net Encryption is a quick and easy way to secure traffic over your network. Some security efforts require a massive amount of resources. Enabling net encryption can be a light-weight solution that won’t significantly impact the customer or require an extensive rework of an application.

Protecting Data En Route

Many organizations are great at protecting their sleeping data at the storage layer. It’s a straightforward process to encrypt and protect data that’s at rest. Cyber criminals have limited opportunities to access this information, so it has a low risk profile.

This situation changes when an application starts talking to the database. Data moves through the internal network or it is handed off to an external network on its way to the final destination. Hackers have the opportunity to snatch that information out of the air, in theory, and use it for malicious purposes.

One of the newest requirements for protecting financial organizations is to enable encryption of inflight data. Oracle’s Net encryption looks for the right setting combination between the client and the server to know that it should use encryption.

• Accepted is the default setting in Oracle. This configuration option allows requests with encrypted and non-encrypted data.
• Rejected stops encrypted traffic from reaching the end point.
• Requested accepts non-encrypted data, but it asks for encryption to try to get the encrypted version.
• Required demands encrypted traffic and non-encrypted traffic is rejected.

The setting on the client and the server must support encryption for Oracle NET Encryption to work properly. Since applications work with encrypted and unencrypted data, it often makes sense to set the client and server to Accepted.

How Oracle NET Encryption Benefits Financial Clients

The financial industry has many regulations that they must adhere to when it comes to cyber security measures. Oracle Net Encryption helps organizations meet the requirements that govern encrypted data en route. When they have security audits, the auditor checks on whether this type of encryption is in place. Financial institutions that fail to remain in compliance with these regulations may face many consequences, from loss of clients to monetary fines.

Another significant advantage to using Oracle NET Encryption is that making the change from unencrypted to encrypted data does not require a massive deployment, extended downtime or much in the way of resources. You can fit this into your IT team’s schedule without getting in the way of other mission-critical tasks that are essential for maintaining cyber security.

Oracle NET Encryption brings a lot to the table for financial institutions and it keeps your data safe as it moves around the internal and external network. When you set this up, you add another layer of protection that makes it difficult for unwanted intruders to get their hands on information they shouldn’t have. Since the financial industry is one of the top targets for cyber criminals, every little bit helps.