AI Has Changed the Threat Landscape. Security Must Start with Data. 

Free patching and security tools available now 
 

AI is transforming how organizations operate. AI agents can deliver exceptional customer experiences, automate workflows, reduce costs, and unlock new business opportunities faster than ever before. But AI is also changing the security landscape in fundamental ways. 

AI systems are creating new paths to sensitive enterprise data. AI agents can query, analyze, and act on information at unprecedented scale. AI-generated applications can introduce unintended access paths and security gaps. At the same time, attackers are using AI to discover vulnerabilities, develop exploits, and automate attacks faster than ever before. 

The result is a new reality: organizations must aim to protect data directly, reduce vulnerability exposure faster, and strive towards rapid recovery when disruptions occur.  

As vendors begin to patch their systems to address various AI-discovered security challenges, the next challenge is for organizations to implement them rapidly. Reducing patch exposure gaps and strengthening security controls is one of the fastest ways that organizations can lower risk today.  However, key challenges remain. Comprehensive regression testing is time-consuming and often delays deployment.  At the same time, business-critical uptime requirements leave little room for maintenance windows, and security teams must balance operational stability against rapidly escalating cyber risk. 

To help customers address these challenges, Oracle is making several of its most widely deployed database security, patching, testing, and lifecycle management tools available at no cost for a limited time, or at a 90% discount on one-year term licenses. These tools help organizations strengthen database security, accelerate patch adoption, reduce downtime, and improve resilience across cloud, multicloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. https://www.oracle.com/database/free/ 

Customers using Oracle Autonomous AI Database in multicloud and Cloud@Customer environments already benefit from built-in automated patching and security capabilities at no additional cost. Oracle recommends moving as many workloads as possible to Autonomous AI Database to help strengthen security, reduce administrative overhead, and lower costs. 

How AI changes the threat model  

AI is changing security in two important ways.  

First, AI agents and AI-generated applications are creating new routes to enterprise data, and often need broad privileged access to sensitive data to deliver useful results. While such AI agents can create a working application in minutes, they can expose sensitive data to users, agents, or applications that were never intended to access it. 

Second, AI is accelerating attacks. The window between a vulnerability disclosure and active exploitation continues to shrink as attackers use AI to identify weaknesses, generate exploit code, and automate attack campaigns. Organizations now have less time to assess risk, test updates, and deploy patches before vulnerabilities are targeted. It shows in the numbers: 92% of security leaders say AI-driven threats are forcing them to upgrade their defenses, yet nearly half admit they feel inadequately prepared.  

Why the traditional model is no longer sufficient  

Traditional security models were designed around protecting operating systems, applications, and network perimeters. That made sense when humans and applications were the primary consumers of enterprise data. But today, when AI agents can directly read, analyze, and act on that data directly, the data layer itself has become a primary security boundary.  

Organizations need security controls that are enforced where the data resides, patching processes that are streamlined, and recovery capabilities that allow them to restore operations quickly when incidents occur. In the agentic AI era, security and resilience belong at the source, anchored to the data itself, not bolted onto the ecosystem around it.  

This is precisely why Oracle’s AI security strategy focuses on three priorities: Secure at Source, Secure at Speed, and Secure through Resilience. 

Secure at Source 

Security controls that exist only in application code can be bypassed, misconfigured, or inconsistently implemented across systems. If agents can access your data, security controls must be enforced where the data lives, not in AI agents’ own code that it can sidestep.  

Oracle AI Database helps organizations apply security controls directly at the data layer so that policies can remain consistently enforced regardless of which application, user, or AI agent is accessing the data. By anchoring security at the source, organizations can reduce the risk of unauthorized access, data leakage, and malicious activity while enabling AI innovation with confidence. Key capabilities include: 

• Deep Data Security enables organizations to define and centrally manage fine-grained authorization and data visibility policies based on an end-user’s identity, roles, and context. This helps ensure that AI agents acting on behalf of users can access only the information those users are authorized to see. By separating authorization and auditing from application code, customers can reduce risk for both new AI agents and existing applications, help secure agentic and RAG workflows, and apply consistent controls across relational, vector, and lakehouse sources without moving data.  

• SQL Firewall helps prevent unauthorized SQL activity and SQL injection attacks by only allowing approved SQL to execute. As SQL Firewall is built directly into the database, it cannot be bypassed. 

• Oracle Database Vault helps organizations strengthen controls around privileged accounts by implementing separation of duties and restricting when, where, and how administrative privileges can be used. This reduces the risk that compromised or misused credentials lead to unauthorized access to critical information.  

As organizations deploy more AI-powered applications and agents, securing data at the source becomes the foundation upon which every other security control depends. 

Secure at Speed 

When attackers move at machine speed and reverse engineer the binaries, organizations can no longer afford lengthy patch cycles, delayed testing processes, or limited visibility into security risks. Reducing vulnerability exposure has become one of the most effective ways that organizations can lower risk today.  

Oracle helps customers accelerate security operations through automated patching, testing, lifecycle management, and risk assessment capabilities.  

Automated patching, testing, and lifecycle management:  

Database Lifecycle Management Pack and Exadata Management Pack help organizations identify, deploy, and manage patches across database, grid infrastructure, and Exadata from a centralized platform.  

GoldenGate and GoldenGate Veridata help organizations reduce or eliminate downtime during patching and upgrade operations by enabling validated switchovers to synchronized environments.  

Real Application Testing allows organizations to assess application impact before deployment so updates can be implemented with greater confidence and lower operational risk. 

Centralized risk monitoring and mitigation: 

Data Safe and Database Security Central provide centralized visibility into security posture across cloud and on-premises databases. They help organizations assess user and configuration risks, discover sensitive data, monitor activity and policy compliance, prioritize remediation, and support audit and incident review for the entire database estate. 

To help customers strengthen security in response to emerging AI-era threats, Oracle is making these database security, patching, testing, and lifecycle management capabilities available at no cost for a limited time or at a 90% discount on one-year term licenses*. 

 Free from June 12, 2026 to February 28, 2027: 

Oracle is also extending the pricing promotion of a 90% discount on a 1-year term license until May 31, 2027 on the following products: 

By removing cost and procurement barriers, organizations can accelerate patch adoption, improve security visibility, reduce operational risk, and close vulnerability exposure gaps faster.  

Secure through Resilience 

Even the strongest defenses can’t guarantee that every attack, outage, or disruption will be prevented. In the AI era, the consequences of disruption can be even greater as organizations increasingly depend on AI-driven applications, automated workflows, and AI agents to support critical business operations.   

Security is no longer defined solely by the ability to prevent incidents. It is equally defined by the ability to recover quickly, restore trusted operations, and minimize business impact when incidents occur. 

Oracle helps organizations build resilience through validated backups, tested standbys, disaster recovery and high availability capabilities. Our solutions help restore data, application state, business context, and AI-driven workflows so you can resume operations quickly and confidently: 

• Zero Data Loss Recovery solutions help organizations protect Oracle databases down to the last committed transaction with zero data loss objectives. Immutable backups, retention locks, encryption, and automated point-in-time recovery help keep critical data protected and recoverable following ransomware attacks, accidental data corruption, or operational failures. These solutions are available across Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, hyperscaler environments, and on-premises deployments. 

• Globally Distributed AI Database help maintain continuous operations through built-in data distribution, Raft-based replication, and automated failover. Applications can continue operating even when infrastructure components, availability zones, or entire sites become unavailable.  

• Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) aims to provide a proven resilience architecture and best practices for achieving enterprise-grade availability, disaster recovery, and business continuity across both multicloud and on-premises environments.  

In a world where attacks move faster and businesses depend more heavily on data and AI-driven operations, resilience is a business requirement.  

What organizations should do next  

As organizations accelerate AI adoption, security must evolve just as quickly. The challenge is no longer simply protecting applications and networks. It is protecting the data at the source, move at speed, and recover when needed. 

Organizations should take three practical steps today: 

• Move to Autonomous AI Database where possible, whether on OCI, hyperscaler environments, or Cloud@Customer, and benefit from automated patching. 

• Upgrade to a Long Term Support release (Oracle Database 19c or Oracle AI Database 26ai) and apply all release updates. It’s the best way to help limit exposure and maintain security across your database estate as threats evolve. 

• Get and use your security and lifecycle management tools now. Theyare available at no cost for a limited time, or at a 90% discount on one-year term licenses*. We encourage all Oracle Database customers to immediately take advantage of these offers. 

AI has fundamentally changed the threat landscape. Attackers are moving faster. AI agents are creating new paths to enterprise data. And the business impact of disruption continues to grow.  

Organizations that succeed in this new environment will be those that secure data at the source, respond to threats at speed, and build resilience into every layer of their operations. 

Security must start where the risk lives: with the data itself.  

• Try Oracle AI Database for free  

• Talk to an Oracle expert about your security strategy 

• Move to Oracle Autonomous AI Database for continuous updates and automated patching 

• Start implementing Oracle Deep Data Security to secure at source 

*Customer must have current, paid Support. Under the free or 90% off programs, Database Lifecycle and Exadata Management Packs, GoldenGate, GoldenGate Veridata, and Real Application Testing are available for the purposes of upgrading and patching only (the products can be used for other purposes but not under the free or 90% off programs).