Accountability And Auditing

Auditing is the monitoring and recording of configured database actions, from both database users and non database users. Accounting is the process of maintaining an audit trail for user actions on the system. Accountability and audit checks are needed to ensure physical integrity of the data which requires defined access to the databases and that is handled through auditing and for keeping the records. If a user has managed to authenticate successfully and tries to access a resource, both successful and unsuccessful attempts should be monitored by the system, and access attempts and their status should appear in the audit trail files

Accountability And Auditing Uses

1. Enable future accountability for current actions taken in a particular schema, table, or row, or affecting specific content

2. Deter users (or others) from inappropriate actions based on that accountability

3. Investigate suspicious activity

4. Notify an auditor that an unauthorized user is manipulating or deleting data and that the user has more privileges than expected which can lead to reassessing user authorizations)

5. Monitor and gather data about specific database activities

6. Detect problems with an authorization or access control implementation

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