In April 2014, 66% of the internet woke up to a major issue that created panic among a number of companies using OpenSSL to protect customer information during secure transactions. With such a large percentage of servers running OpenSSL, most people could have been effected by the Heartbleed Bug and never even known. The virus hit big names such as Google, Yahoo, Gmail, Amazon Web Services and any other server running OpenSSL version 1.0.1 from March 14, 2012. The once secure feeling we all had having the SSL lock on our internet browser was now compromised.
One way to fix this internet wide security breach was for every server to be updated with a new version of OpenSSL and then have all the security certificates reissued because all the private keys on the server could have been compromised. If the certificates were not reissued, then hackers could still use the compromised keys to access data on the affected server.
In the IT world we have fixed a number of security issues in similar fashion. Find a bug, create a patch, fix the problem and wait for the next hack to show us a flaw in our original design. Oracle, with the new M7 processor, has taken security down to the silicon. Security in silicon is better than security in the operating system. Software can be changed where silicon cannot. Even the best hackers have not figured out a way to download changes to a microprocessor. However, you can bet that the best hackers are working on it.
Security must be a top priority in every line of business today. Security should not be something that we turn on or off based on convenience or performance. Always ON is the only option in today’s Cyber World. The M7 processor is a step in that direction. One M7 server running in your data center could have triggered a notification that the Heartbleed virus was causing a data breach. Once detected, IT professionals could located the breach on all machines in the data center.
This new Oracle M7 processor is already available in the SPARC T7-1, T7-2, T7-4, M7-8, M7-16 and the Supercluster M7. The M7 has multiple features and performance records that we will discuss in future posts. If you are would like to implement this new security feature please contact our Oracle Team at RFD and we can work with you to provide the perfect Oracle M7 server for your needs.