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Security
You can secure your Informix® database server and the data that is stored in your Informix databases. You can encrypt data, secure connections, control user privileges and access, and audit data security.
Security in HCL Informix®
The Informix® Security Guide documents methods for keeping your data secure by preventing unauthorized viewing and altering of data or database objects, including how to use the secure-auditing facility of the database server.
Securing data
HCL Informix® directory security
utilities and product directories are secure by default.
Security of the chunk files
For Informix® security, store data in chunk files that are owned by user informix, belong to group informix, and have 660 permissions.

Security
You can secure your Informix® database server and the data that is stored in your Informix databases. You can encrypt data, secure connections, control user privileges and access, and audit data security.
- Security in HCL Informix®
  The Informix® Security Guide documents methods for keeping your data secure by preventing unauthorized viewing and altering of data or database objects, including how to use the secure-auditing facility of the database server.
  - Securing data
    - HCL Informix® directory security
      utilities and product directories are secure by default.
      - Utilities for checking directory security (UNIX™)
        The database server utilities make security checks before the database server starts.
      - Security warnings and error messages at server startup (UNIX™)
        If a security check that a server utility performs at startup detects a problem, the security check returns an error message or warning.
      - Users and group membership for running utilities
        Most utilities run as secure users and belong to a secure group.
      - Security of the chunk files
        For Informix® security, store data in chunk files that are owned by user informix, belong to group informix, and have 660 permissions.
      - Security for loading external modules
        Use the DB_LIBRARY_PATH configuration parameter to control the location from which shared objects, such as external modules, can be loaded.
    - Network data encryption
      Use network encryption to encrypt data transmitted between server and client, and between server and other server.
    - Column-level encryption
      You can use column-level encryption to store sensitive data in an encrypted format. After encrypting sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, only users who can provide a secret password can decrypt the data.
    - Connection security
      You can administer the security of the connections to the database server by using authentication and authorization processes.
    - Discretionary access control
      Discretionary access control verifies whether the user who is attempting to perform an operation has been granted the required privileges to perform that operation.
    - Label-Based Access Control
      You can use label-based access control (LBAC), an implementation of multi-level security (MLS), to control who has read access and who has write access to individual rows and columns of data.
  - Auditing data security

Security of the chunk files

For Informix® security, store data in chunk files that are owned by user informix, belong to group informix, and have 660 permissions.

For non-root installations of Informix®, the owner of the installation must also own the chunk files where data is stored. Chunk files for non-root installations of Informix® must have permissions set to 600.

The directory holding the chunk files must be secure, following the same rules as those that ensure the installation directory is secure. Similarly, all other files and directories configured for use by Informix® must be secure.

You can use the onsecurity utility to check if there are security problems with the directory holding the chunk files. The utility prints a diagnosis of any such problems, and can suggest a way to fix them.

Do not use /tmp as the directory for any log files or dump files. However, it is generally safe to create and use a subdirectory such as /tmp/informix if the subdirectory has appropriately restricted permissions. Typically, a subdirectory like /tmp/informix is owned by user and group informix and does not have any public access permissions.