What Do Oracle Audit Vault Collection Agents Do?

Auditing, Oracle Audit Vault, Oracle Database

The Oracle Audit Vault is installed on a server, and collector agents are installed on the hosts running the source databases. These collector agents communicate with the audit vault server.

If the collection agents are not active, no audit data is lost, as long as the source database continues to collect the audit data. When the collection agent is restarted, it will capture the audit data that the source database had collected during the time the collection agent was inactive.

There are three types of agent collectors for Oracle databases. There are other collectors for third-party database vendors such as SAP Sybase, Microsoft SQL-Server, and IBM DB2.

Audit Value Collectors for Oracle Databases*
Audit Trail Type	How Enabled	Collector Name
Database audit trail	For standard audit records: `AUDIT_TRAIL` initialization parameter set to: `DB` or `DB, EXTENDED`. For fine-grained audit records: The `audit trail` parameter of `DBMS_FGA.ADD_POLICY` procedure is set to: `DBMS_FGA.DB` or `DBMS_FGA.DB + DBMS_FGA.EXTENDED`.	DBAUD
Operating system audit trail	For standard audit records: `AUDIT_TRAIL` initialization parameter is set to: `OS`, `XML`, or `XML, EXTENDED`. For syslog audit trails, `AUDIT_TRAIL` is set to `OS` and the `AUDIT_SYS_OPERATIONS` parameter is set to `TRUE`. In addition, the `AUDIT_SYSLOG_LEVEL` parameter must be set. For fine-grained audit records: The `audit_trail` parameter of the `DBMS_FGA.ADD_POLICY` procedure is set to `DBMS_FGA.XML` or `DBMS_FGA.XML + DBMS_FGA.EXTENDED`.	OSAUD
Redo log files	The table that you want to audit must be eligible. See "Creating Capture Rules for Redo Log File Auditing" for more information.	REDO

*Note if using Oracle 12c; the assumption is that Mixed Mode Unified Auditing is being used

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Reference

Integrigy Guide to Oracle Audit Vault Integrigy Guide to Oracle Audit Vault
Presentation “Developing Value with Oracle Audit Vault Developing Value with Oracle Audit Vault