Database Security Firm Sentrigo Announces Ongoing Protection for Older Oracle Releases

Company expanding platform support to include Oracle 11g and Oracle Databases in AIX Environments

• By James E. Powell
• 08/15/2007

Sentrigo, Inc. today announced that the company’s Hedgehog product now supports the final version of Oracle Database 8i (Oracle 8.1.7). The update is available from its Web site. By offering support for this popular version of the market’s dominant database, Sentrigo says it is “providing software-based security against hackers and privileged insiders alike.”

“Sentrigo joins the ranks of other database security vendors out there that are announcing the support of 11g, but Sentrigo is taking things a step further by providing support for other mission critical versions. Since Oracle no longer supports 8.1.7 with security patches, DBAs who continue to operate on this platform are more or less hung out to dry from a security perspective, as it relates to existing or new threats out there.” A company spokesperson told Enterprise Systems.

Sentrigo will also support Oracle Database 11g, the newest version of the product, which was made available earlier this week for Linux. The company is also expanding the operating systems Hedgehog supports; IBM AIX joins existing support for Sun Solaris, Red Hat Linux, and SUSE Linux.

“Many companies are still using Oracle 8.1.7 because it meets their business and technical requirements,” said Jerald Murphy, director of research operations for the Robert Frances Group, in a Sentrigo statement. “Yet Oracle is no longer providing patches for the product, so it’s vulnerable to existing and new, undetected threats. This is an unrecognized yet very real security issue for organizations. IT executives should look for solutions that address this vulnerability in order to protect their critical business systems.”

Hedgehog protects databases from unauthorized use by company insiders (such as database administrators, consultants and developers) who comprise the greatest threat to sensitive data stores according to Sentrigo, as well as outsiders (such as hackers). The product can installed quickly and can monitor all database transactions and optionally terminate database sessions. Hedgehog includes a virtual patching feature so it can immediately protect databases against vulnerabilities that have been discovered but not yet patched.

Hedgehog is available in two versions -- Enterprise and Standard. The Standard version may be used indefinitely free of charge.

According to Dan Sarel, vice president of products at Sentrigo, the company is “looking ahead to Oracle 11g” but is also aware of the “thousands of Oracle 8i deployments around the world that are virtually unprotected against new threats.”

More information is available at http://www.sentrigo.com.