Pete Finnigan's Oracle Security Forum - How do I protect production data in a test/dev env

Forum

Home/Forum

Welcome, Guest. Please Login. Nov 23^rd, 2024, 12:26pm News: Welcome to Pete Finnigan's Oracle security forum
Home \| Help \| Search \| Members \| Login

   Pete Finnigan's Oracle Security Forum
   Oracle Security
   Oracle Security (Moderator: Pete Finnigan)
   How do I protect production data in a test/dev env

« Previous topic | Next topic »

Pages: 1

Reply | Notify of replies | Send Topic | Print

Author

Topic: How do I protect production data in a test/dev env (Read 2596 times)

Pete Finnigan
PeteFinnigan.com Administrator

Oracle Security is easier if you design for it

View Profile | WWW | Email

Gender: male

Posts: 309

How do I protect production data in a test/dev env
« on: Sep 3^rd, 2005, 5:13pm »

Quote | Modify

We have an environment where we are constantly having to do the following to our production data:

1. Copy and insert it into our test/development environment for our developers to troubleshoot a production issue, and

2. Send a copy of our entire production database to our vendor so that they can upload it to their database instance and reproduce the bug.

Obviously our data is very sensitive but it's equally important for us to fix show-stopper bugs for which the data needs to be sent to the vendor.

Are there any safeguards/measures that you all can suggest if we were to use production data in a test/dev environment.

Thank you in advance.

IP Logged

Pete Finnigan (email:pete@petefinnigan.com)
Oracle Security Web site: http://www.petefinnigan.com
Forum: http://www.petefinnigan.com/forum/yabb/YaBB.cgi
Oracle security blog: http://www.petefinnigan.com/weblog/entries/index.html

Pete Finnigan
PeteFinnigan.com Administrator

Oracle Security is easier if you design for it

View Profile | WWW | Email

Gender: male

Posts: 309

Re: How do I protect production data in a test/dev
« Reply #1 on: Sep 6^th, 2005, 1:38am »

Quote | Modify

"Obviously our data is very sensitive"

Part of the issue is, in which way is it sensitive.
If it is personal information about people, then your jurisdiction may have laws governing whether you can disclose it (eg to the app vendor).
That may 'just' be a matter of anonymising it (changing names/addresses/birth dates etc).
Obviously the quantity of data is important there. If it is a couple of thousand customers, it may not be a problem to rename them all to John Doe001 to John Doe99999.

One issue that is more important for the extract to test is that it is very important that data generated from the test environment (eg bills) does get used as if it were production. You do not want your 'real-life' customers billed by your testers.
You need to mangle credit card numbers, bank accounts, addresses (again)....

IP Logged

Pete Finnigan
PeteFinnigan.com Administrator

Oracle Security is easier if you design for it

View Profile | WWW | Email

Gender: male

Posts: 309

Re: How do I protect production data in a test/dev
« Reply #2 on: Sep 6^th, 2005, 10:56pm »

Quote | Modify

Hi,

This is a difficult problem to solve and is very dependant on a number of things. The first is legislation. If there are legislative issues with your data then you need to know about them and account for them. If legislation for instance protects Credit card numbers then you cannot simply copy them into test and dev databases or worse even to outside suppliers.

The second issue is not just legislation but the issue of whether morally you should be spreading the customers data around. Can you trust your software supplier to look after the data during or after fixing the bugs. What if they then pass your data on to another sub supplier so that some software component they have bought in can be tested?

The issues are endless and un-controllable IF you give them the real data.

Two options. Have test databases with completely made up data and try and replicate the issues there. I have worked in software houses with complicated systems and this mathod has worked in a lot of cases. The reason it worked is that the software was well instrumented and we were able to get application traces from production databases without revealing the data or copying it. We could replicate the issue in test systems. Sometimes this does not work and that is where the applications trace helped as it was possible to see the flow of events in the production system without copying the data off site.

The other option is as suggested by Gary to mangle the data before its copied, if it must be copied. I have written routines to do this in the past.

The bottom line is try and find a way to not copy the data, if you have to copy it try and keep it internal to your organisation, if you cannot keep it internal then mange it.

cheers

Pete

IP Logged

Pages: 1

Reply | Notify of replies | Send Topic | Print


« Previous topic \| Next topic »

PFCLScan
Simply connect PFCLScan to your Oracle database and it will automatically discover the security issues that could make your Oracle database vulnerable to attack and to the potential loss of your data.

Learn more
PFCLObfuscate
PFCLObfuscate is the only tool available that can automatically add license controls to your PL/SQL code. PFCLObfuscate protects your Intellectual Property invested in your PL/SQL database code.

Learn more
PFCLCode
PFCLCode is a tool to allow you to analyse your PL/SQL code for many different types of security issues. PFCLCode gives you a detailed review and reports and includes a powerful colour syntax highlighting code editor

Learn more
PFCLForensics
PFCLForensics is the only tool available to allow you to do a detailed live response of a breached Oracle database and to then go on and do a detailed forensic analysis of the data gathered.

Learn more
PFCLReselling
PeteFinnigan.com Limited has partnered with a small number of relevant companies to resell their products where they enhance or compliment what we do

Learn more
PFCLATK
PFCLATK is a toolkit that allows detailed pre-defined policy driven audit trails for your Oracle database. The toolkit also provides for a centralised audit trail and centralised activity reporting

Learn more
PFCLCookie
PFCLCookie is a useful tool to use to audit your websites for tracking cookies. Scan websites in a natural way using powerful browser driven scanner

Learn more
PFCLTraining
PFCLTraining is a set of expert training classes for you, aimed at teaching how to audit your own Oracle database, design audit trails, secure code in PL/SQL and secure and lock down your Oracle database.

Learn more
PFCLServices
Choose PFCLServices to add PeteFinnigan.com Ltd to your team for your Oracle Security needs. We are experts in performing detailed security audits, data security design work and policy creation

Learn more
PFCLConsulting
Choose PFCLConsulting to ask PeteFinnigan.com Limited to set up and use our products on your behalf

Learn more
PFCLCustom
All of our software products can be customised at a number of levels. Choose this to see how our products can be part of your products and services

Learn more
PFCLCloud
Private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud or no cloud. Learn how all of our services, trainings and products will work in the cloud

Learn more
PFCLUserRights
PFCLUserRights allows you to create a very detailed view of database users rights. The focus of the reports is to allow you to decide what privileges and accounts to keep and which to remove.

Learn more
PFCLSTK
PFCLSTK is a toolkit application that allows you to provide database security easily to an existing database. PFCLSTK is a policy driven toolkit of PL/SQL that creates your security

Learn more
PFCLSFTK
PFCLSFTK is a toolkit that solves the problem of securing third party applications written in PL/SQL. It does this by creating a thin layer between the application and database and this traps SQL Injection attempts. This is a static firewall.

Learn more
PFCLSEO
PFCLSEO is a web scanner based on the PFCLScan technology so that a user can easily scan a website for technical SEO issues

Learn more