Oracle debuts array of new cybersecurity features for its cloud platform

Oracle Corp. today introduced new cybersecurity features for its cloud platform that will help customers more easily protect their applications from hacking attempts. 

Oracle’s cloud platform, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, is powered by a network of data centers spanning 20 countries. OCI currently includes 37 cloud regions, or data center clusters, and Oracle plans to bring seven more online by year’s end. 

The first new cybersecurity-focused addition to OCI that Oracle announced today is an offering called OCI Network Firewall. It’s a managed cybersecurity service based on Palo Alto Networks Inc.’s VM-Series firewall product. The new service can be used in an OCI cloud environment to block network requests to and from malicious domains, as well as scan data traffic for breach indicators. 

OCI Network Firewall is joined by another new offering called the Oracle Threat Intelligence Service. It provides data about hacker activities that companies can use to inform their cybersecurity efforts. The service combines threat data collected by Oracle with signals from external sources, including partners such as CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. and open-source threat intelligence feeds.

As part of the updates announced today, Oracle is also upgrading the existing cloud security features offered by OCI. The company introduced new features for its Oracle Security Zones and Oracle Cloud Guard offerings. 

Oracle Security Zones is an OCI feature that helps organizations prevent hackers from modifying their cloud environments’ configuration. When enabled, the feature automatically blocks certain configuration changes. Oracle is adding support for custom Security Zones policy sets, which will enable OCI customers to more granularly manage which configuration changes should be blocked in their cloud environments. 

The second OCI service for which the company announced enhancements today is Oracle Cloud Guard. It’s used by customers to detect vulnerabilities and malicious activity in their cloud environments.

Oracle Cloud Guard is being updated with a new tool, Oracle Cloud Guard Threat Detector, that highlights misconfigured cloud resources at risk of being targeted by hackers. The tool can similarly spot malicious activity in customer deployments. It includes automation workflows, dubbed security recipes by Oracle, that enable administrators to fix cybersecurity issues faster by automating some of the manual tasks involved in the process.

Oracle Cloud Guard Threat Detector is rolling out alongside a second new capability dubbed Oracle Cloud Guard Fusion Applications Detector. It extends the cybersecurity service’s threat detection features to Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, a suite of cloud-based business applications provided by the technology giant. Companies use the suite to manage key business processes such as human capital management, sales and marketing.

Oracle Cloud Guard Fusion Applications Detector spots if hackers attempt to access or modify sensitive data in Fusion applications. The tool can, for example, detect when a user account that usually can’t access sensitive business data is suddenly given the ability to delete important records. The tool is initially available for two applications in the Fusion suite: Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management and Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning.

Oracle’s latest OCI cybersecurity updates are rolling out a few weeks after the company introduced new cloud services based on its Oracle Exadata Cloud Infrastructure X9M appliance. The appliance is powered by 64-core Advanced Micro Devices Inc. processors. Each X9M provides up to 8,064 virtual central processing units, as well as 3.1 petabytes of uncompressed database capacity. 

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