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Secure your data first, work later...

Going off track again. I was reading in the AustralianIT News site about "Laptop Lock Down". (I get annoyed having to follow links in blogs, so to summarise it's about security of confidential data on laptops and mobile PCs/Blackberries...)

Being a Consultant, I have several clients across APAC, who would be kinda annoyed if I told them their technical design for their production eBusiness Suite is in some dodgy person's hands...

So I've started using this encrypted filesystem program TrueCrypt, which allows you to create an encrypted file and mount it as a filesystem when unlocked.

Awesome, it means when I get to a client, I mount the drive and all my stuff is there.

And if the laptop goes missing, I don't have to stress about client data falling into the wrong hands. As far as I know, it'd take a while to break through 256 bit AES encryption algorith with SHA-1 Hashing to boot.

Truecrypt is Open Source too which is cool.

OK, back on topic... OCM stuff.

Let's look at the environment which is used in the OCM exam.

Software Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3 operating system, Oracle Database 10g 10.1.0.4, and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control 10.1.0.3 are used during the exam.
  • Participants can choose to work in either Linux and Oracle CLI or GUI environment when available during the exam.
  • Candidates will also have access to a complete, non-searchable Oracle documentation set.
Time to blow the dust off the VMWare image I started creating.

Basically, I'm going to create an image which includes RHEL3 installed with no "Oracle-ization" done at all, but with all the rpms and Oracle software required to create the environment described above. With a separately staged Oracle Doco CD with the searching turned off.

Then, after each scenario, I can revert to the original snapshot, and start again.

The only issue is stuff like when RAC get's involved, that should be fun.

Anybody got any ideas for that one...apart from bouncing the nearest clients production RAC environment to run a test :-)


Comments (2)

Charles Schultz:

Actually, the 10g OCM is being upgraded to 10.2.0.2 after July 31, I believe. Good thing! Too bad they will not be using Grid Control 10.2.0.3; that makes life so much easier.

Thanks for mentioning TrueCrypt! Quite handy!

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