V-219755

Discussion

Information system auditing capability is critical for accurate forensic analysis. Audit record content that may be necessary to satisfy the requirement of this control includes: timestamps, source and destination addresses, user/process identifiers, event descriptions, success/fail indications, file names involved, and access control or flow control rules invoked. Database software is capable of a range of actions on data stored within the database. It is important, for accurate forensic analysis, to know exactly when specific actions were performed. This requires the date and time an audit record is referring to. If date and time information is not recorded and stored with the audit record, the record itself is of very limited use.

Check Content

Verify, using vendor and system documentation if necessary, that the DBMS is configured to use Oracle's auditing features, or that a third-party product or custom code is deployed and configured to satisfy this requirement.

If a third-party product or custom code is used, compare its current configuration with the audit requirements. If any of the requirements is not covered by the configuration, this is a finding.

The remainder of this Check is applicable specifically where Oracle auditing is in use.

To see if Oracle is configured to capture audit data, enter the following SQLPlus command:
SHOW PARAMETER AUDIT_TRAIL
or the following SQL query:
SELECT * FROM SYS.V$PARAMETER WHERE NAME = 'audit_trail';
If Oracle returns the value 'NONE', this is a finding.

To confirm that Oracle audit is capturing sufficient information to establish when events occurred, perform a successful auditable action and an auditable action that results in an SQL error, and then view the results in the SYS.AUD$ table or the audit file, whichever is in use.  If no timestamp, or the wrong value, is returned for the auditable actions just performed, this is a finding.