Communication Support Services

Communication support services include connectivity-related services such as the following security services:

• Authentication is the process of verifying the identity of a user or an application. The most common form of authentication is to require the user to enter a name and password to obtain access to a computer or an application.
• Message integrity ensures that communication messages are intact and unaltered when they arrive at their destination.
• Message confidentiality protects messages, usually by encryption and decryption, from viewing by unauthorized users during transmission.

Communication support services can also include other processing such as data compression or traffic-based accounting.

The database server provides a default method of authentication, which is described in Network Security Files. The database server uses the default authentication policy when you do not specify a communications support module.

The database server provides extra security-related communication support services through plug-in software modules called Communication Support Modules (CSM). For details, see Using Communication Support Modules (CSMs) for Password and Data Transmission Encryption.