Oracle or MySQL, Which Provides More Security?

Oracle and MySQL are the two pioneers in database technology at present, Now Oracle Corporation has bought MySQL company itself. Both Oracle and MySQL provide their own unique, remarkable and state of the art methodology in data storage and retrieval. Oracle has a leading advantage over MySQL in this field of database because it has been around for more than a decade. Most of the advanced data storage and sql functions were introduced by oracle which was later adopted by others like MySQL in their systems which makes them a tough competitor even though oracle has years of experience. The advantages that MySQL has over oracle are that, the MySQL being an open source software, it is an application which is under constant improvement. So who outperforms the other? For getting answer for the question we need to take into consideration some criteria which can be used to compare both and end up in a conclusion. Security features can be considered as one such criterion. So let's see some of the security features that oracle and MySQL provide in their systems.

First to start of with, some of the security features that oracle provides in their systems are as follows

1.Oracle DB vault:
This is a new feature that the oracle has added lately in their new release, the 11g. This provides advance privileges to users, improved access control and more informative services like how, where and when the applications or the users access the database.

2.Oracle Advance security transparent data encryption (TDE):
This facility provides data injection without causing major changes in the application code.

3. Audit Vault:
This provides advance book keeping services. This includes reporting, consolidations, alerting functionality and protection of audit data.

4. 'Transparent' data encryption:
Transparent data encryption provides encoding and decoding of data when it is read to and from an authorized user. The users are not aware of these encoding and decoding and also the application don't have to be modified to cope up with this security feature.

Now that some of the oracle security measures had been discussed, then moving on to MySQL some of the security features that MySQL provides are:

1.Access control list(ACL):
This is the main security feature that MySQL provides. ACL provides the database users with varying level of access to database and tables, and the operation are controlled according to certain levels that has been predefined. For example, in a MySQL system the operation like select, update, insert and delete can be set for users in such a way that the user can only perform the operation which has been set by the administrator.

2. 'SSL' Encrypted Connections
Secure socket layer provides secure communication between two clients. The MySQL provides additional encryption features by making use of the SSL. The communications are more secure by the use of this feature.

These are the security features that both oracle and MySQL provides. These features are under constant development which would improve as time progresses and the data storage will become more secure in the future.