The arrival of frontier AI models is changing an assumption that has shaped enterprise patching for decades: that defenders generally have time between publication of a vulnerability and practical exploitation.
That window is getting smaller.
Frontier AI models can accelerate vulnerability discovery, analyze software changes, reverse-engineer security patches, and help identify potential attack paths at unprecedented speed and scale. They can also combine weaknesses across different layers of an application and data stack into attacks that might not have been obvious when each vulnerability was considered independently.
Oracle is responding with a faster patch cadence and the inclusion of monthly Critical Security Patches (CSPUs). This has several implications to database administrator teams, including the need to deploy these CSPUs as soon as they are available. For customers running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle provides software images for both databases and Grid Infrastructure every 3 months. These Oracle provided images contain the latest RU for that quarter.
The question now is. How can I have a software image that contains the latest CSPU?
Oracle-provided versus custom software images
Oracle-provided software images contain generally available Oracle Database or Grid Infrastructure releases and updates.
Custom software images start with a supported Oracle Release Update and allow the customer to add the specific interim or one-off patches required by their environment. OCI stores these images in Oracle-managed Object Storage and makes them available as reusable resources for provisioning and updating database infrastructure. That makes custom software images particularly useful as Oracle moves toward a faster security-patching cadence.
How to create custom software images?
Let’s use Oracle Database 19c as an example.
Our starting baseline is:
Oracle Database 19c 19.32.0.0.260721 July 2026 RU
The August 2026 security release then introduces targeted fixes on top of that baseline. August DB MRP Patch for 19c on Linux is 39834034.
This will create the DB software image containing the July 2026 RU plus the August 2026 CSPU (MRP).
There is another useful method.
Suppose you’ve already created and tested a Database Home containing exactly the patch combination you want.
Run:
$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch lsinventory > /tmp/db19c_aug2026_lsinventory.txtOCI allows this inventory file to be uploaded while creating the custom software image. OCI can use the inventory to ensure that the new image contains, at minimum, the patches already present in that Oracle Home.
You can create software images for Base Database Service and for Exadata Cloud. So, be sure you create the right one for your specific DB estate.
Below I show the images I created for both database and GI software with the August 2026 CSPU (MRP).
Thanks,
Alfredo