Starting with this release, you can encrypt existing tablespaces and fully encrypt databases.

In previous releases, you could only encrypt new tablespaces. However, this new feature enables you to encrypt both offline and online tablespaces. To encrypt a database, you encrypt the Oracle-supplied tablespaces, such as SYSTEM and SYSAUX. Offline tablespace conversion can be used for tablespaces in Oracle Database 11g release 1 (11.1) and Oracle Database 12c release 1 (12.1). You can perform encryption conversion operations in parallel and perform the encryption in an Oracle Data Guard environment. You can configure all future tablespaces to be automatically encrypted, which is beneficial for an Oracle Cloud environment.

You now can use the ARIA, GOST, and SEED encryption algorithms for column and tablespace encryption, and the AES and DES encryption standards.

The main benefit of these new encryption standards is that they meet the national standards for their respective countries.

• ARIA uses the same block sizes as AES. It is designed for lightweight environments and the implementation of hardware. ARIA meets the standards used in Korea.

• GOST is very similar to DES except that it has a large number of rounds and secret S-boxes. GOST meets the standards used in Russia.

• SEED is used by several standard protocols: S/MIME, TLS/SSL, IPSec, and ISO/IEC. SEED meets the standards used in Korea.

You now can force a keystore operation that is prevented because of an in-use auto-login keystore or a closed software or hardware keystore.

In previous releases, for many keystore operations, you had to manually open the software keystore before performing the operation. In this release, you can perform these two actions in one ADMINISTER KEY MANAGEMENT statement execution by including the FORCE KEYSTORE clause.

The operations that you can use the FORCE KEYSTORE clause on are as follows: rotating a keystore password; creating, using, rekeying, tagging, importing, exporting, migrating, or reverse migrating encryption keys; opening or backing up keystores; adding, updating, or deleting secret keystores.

You now can configure a software or a hardware keystore to use an external store for its password.

This feature enables you to store the password in a separate location where it can be centrally managed and accessed. To use this functionality, you must first set the EXTERNAL_KEYSTORE_CREDENTIAL_LOCATION initialization parameter to a location where the external keystore credential will be stored. Afterward, you can include the EXTERNAL STORE setting in the IDENTIFIED BY clause when you run the ADMINISTER KEY MANAGEMENT statement for the following operations: opening, closing, backing up the keystore; adding, updating, or deleting a secret keystore; creating, using, rekeying, tagging, importing, exporting encryption keys.

As an alternative to third-party hardware security modules, you now can specify Oracle Key Vault as a keystore.

To configure Oracle Key Vault as a keystore, you can edit the sqlnet.ora file METHOD setting in the WALLET_LOCATION parameter to point to OKV.

You now can define and associate different Data Redaction policy expressions with different columns within the same table or view.

This feature provides greater flexibility for anyone who creates Data Redaction policies.

For example, this feature enables you to share a single Data Redaction policy expression with multiple Data Redaction policies.

When you create the policy expression, you can apply it to any table or view column that is included in an existing Data Redaction policy. If you change the policy expression, the change is reflected in all Data Redaction policies that redact the associated table or view columns.

This new feature applies to named Oracle Data Redaction policy expressions.

This feature facilitates the maintenance and administration of policy expressions. When you modify the named policy expression, the changes are automatically applied to all tables and views in the database that use the expression.

Starting with this release, the redacted value can be NULL.

For example, you can use this feature to hide data.

When you define an Oracle Data Redaction policy, you can set the function_type parameter to DBMS_REDACT.NULLIFY to ensure that the redacted value to always be NULL.

You now can define regular expression-based redaction (DBMS_REDACT.REGEXP) policies on columns of the CLOB and NCLOB data types.