While Oracle Internet Directory is a secure repository, there is a security challenge and inherent risk in centralizing credentials in any publicly accessible repository. Although centralized credentials can be protected at least as securely as distributed credentials, the very nature of centralization increases the consequences of inadvertent credential exposure to unauthorized parties. It is therefore imperative to limit the privileges of administrators to set restrictive Access Control Lists (ACLs) in the directory, and to implement good security practices in the protection of security credentials when they are temporarily outside of the directory.