Since the earliest releases of Oracle Cloud, the security has been managed by the Fusion Middleware products Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) and Oracle Authorization Policy Manager (APM). Whilst extremely powerful tools for managing user accounts and role based access, the tools required a level of knowledge beyond standard application configuration. They were also displayed through a separate UI to the main applications and configuration of security rules involved using multiple screens and UIs.
Leading up to Release 12, Oracle have done a lot of work to transition onto a tool called the "Security Console". This tool is embedded in the application and is intended as a "one-stop shop" for security configuration. By Release 12, this transition is virtually complete.
Now, the Security Console allows us to see the holistic view of all aspects of functional and data security using a visual tool. We can focus on parts of the security configuration and drill down towards detailed privileges or up towards users. The Security Console includes functionality to copy roles and create custom versions, to add/remove functional data data privileges and to view detailed analytics about roles and role usage.
This image shows a typical view of roles in the Security Console, complete with colour coding to indicate what type of role each role is (seeded or custom), and to distinguish between roles, privileges and users.
It has simplified the management of users and roles into a single UI and is a great advance for implementors and system administrators alike.
