Encrypted Backups

Hello all,

The recent news about lost backup tapes has got me wondering about backup safety and encrypted backups in particular. Does anybody on the list have an interesting method for protecting the data that is written to tape and sent off-site? A friend sent me this link to the January article in Oracle magazine that discusses 10g release news:

<http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/05-jan/o15news.html>:

The article references improvements in the backup tools and Transparent Data Encryption and he was wondering if RMAN encrypted data as it was sent to tape. I did a little research and have found discussions about backup agents that might perform the server, but then there's the issue of whether those agents will work with RMAN.

I suppose one approach would be to encrypt the database and then the backup would be encrypted as well. However, most of our data doesn't really merit continual encryption, until the off-site backup issue raises it's news-worthy head.

Anyone have an approach they can share? Is there any discussion at Oracle about encrypting data as it's backed up by RMAN? Is it being done already in some release/installation and I've missed the discussion?

Robyn

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