Strengthening OCI with Security Zone Enhancements: 19 New Policies (May 2025)


Oracle’s OCI Security Zones now offer 19 additional policy controls, empowering teams to enforce stronger boundaries across cloud resources. These updates are designed to block insecure operations—ensuring robust, at-scale security posture enforcement.

What’s New?

Effective May 30, 2025, these new deny policies are now available and can be enabled in your Security Zone recipes:

  • Networking: deny DRG_gateway, deny LPG_gateway, deny NAT_gateway, deny SGW_gateway

  • Security Lists & NSGs: deny create_or_modify_vcn_security_list, deny update_network_security_group_egress_rules

  • Compute & Storage Management: deny manage_compute_and_block_storage_resource, deny manage_DNS_resource, deny manage_file_storage_resource, deny manage_image_resource

  • Bastion Sessions: deny manage_bastion_resource

  • Load Balancers: deny delete_all_load_balancer_back_end_sets

  • VCN Controls: deny manage_vcn_route_tables, deny manage_virtual_network_resource, plus deny create_drg, deny create_vcn_security_list, deny terminate_instance

These policies enforce a hardened configuration, blocking potentially risky actions within designated security compartments.

Why It Matters

  1. Prevent Accidental Misconfigurations
    Policies like deny terminate_instance ensure critical compute instances aren’t accidentally destroyed.

  2. Harden Network Setup
    Denials on gateways and security lists prevent developers from opening insecure network paths.

  3. Centralize Governance
    Enforcing controls via Security Zone recipes ensures consistent standards across projects and teams.

  4. Meeting Compliance over Time
    These policy controls support evolving standards by locking down high-risk resource changes.

Real-World Scenarios

Example 1: Secure Finance App Deployment

A financial services firm deploys its core application inside a Security Zone. A developer tries to add an internet gateway to enable external API calls.

  • Policy hit: deny manage_virtual_network_resource blocks the change.

  • Result: Network integrity preserved; infra lead reviews use case and implements a secure, proxy-based solution instead.

Example 2: Preventing Bastion Misuse

An IT admin intended to remove a legacy bastion but mistakenly executes manage_bastion_resource.

  • Policy hit: Request denied by deny manage_bastion_resource.

  • Result: No accidental session exposure; admin correctly transitions to modern access controls.

Example 3: Guarding Production Workloads

A SRE team tries to clean up unused compute instances in a production compartment but hits deny terminate_instance.

  • Policy hit: Deletion is denied.

  • Result: Accidental removal is prevented. The team audits ownership and schedules cleanup during maintenance.

How to Get Started

  1. Review the 19 new policies in the [OCI Security Zones documentation] 

  2. Customize your Security Zone recipes: Enable policies relevant to your environment—e.g., block all gateway alterations or restrict secret storage changes.

  3. Monitor and adjust: Validate policy violations via Console or Cloud Guard alerts.

  4. Iterate iteratively: Start with blocking only high-impact actions, then expand policy coverage as confidence grows.

Final Thoughts

These Security Zone policy additions help organizations enforce defense-in-depth, reduce cloud misconfiguration risks, and maintain stronger compliance. With a few clicks or API calls, teams can make "secure-by-design" environments the default.

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