They are not on the same box. They are in a HSM. A dedicated piece of tamper-proof hardware that stores secrets (keys). The Oracle-server needs to talk to the HSM to get the keys. This is not a low-budget setup (well, it’s Oracle…) - rather, it’s for when the data is really very valuable so that the cost for redundant HSMs, Oracle, Data Guard etc.pp. is still lower than the value of the data. OP works for an outfit that typically does outsourcing for these kinds of clients. It’s all about having more degrees of separation between different functions, so you don’t have to trust the single, Dennis-Nedry-type of admin to not sell the information in the database to the highest bidder. |
