Oracle DBAs and GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) is a regulation by which the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission intend to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union (EU).

To bring Oracle database to align with GDPR directive, we have to encrypt all the databases and files on disk, aka encryption at rest (when data is stored). We also have to encrypt the database network traffic. 

The Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) feature allows sensitive data to be encrypted within the datafiles to prevent access to it from the operating system. 

You cannot encrypt an existing tablespace. So if you wish to encrypt existing data, you need to move them from unencrypted tablespaces to encrypted tablespaces. For doing this you can use any of following methods:

i) Oracle Data Pump utility.

ii) Commands like CREATE TABLE...AS SELECT...

iii) Move tables like ALTER TABLE...MOVE..  or rebuild indexes.

iv) Oracle Table Redefinition.

In order encrypt network traffic between client and server we have 2 options from Oracle:

i) Native Network Encryption for Database Connections

ii) Configuration of TCP/IP with SSL and TLS for Database Connections

Native Network Encryption is all about setting sqlnet.ora file and doesn't have the overhead of second option whereyou have to configure various network files at server and client and also have to obtain certificates and create wallet. In first option, there is possibility of not gurantee of encryption, whereas in second there is gurantee of encryption.