Real World Database Auditing

IOUG 2009 COLLABORATE Presentation - Database auditing is one of the most misunderstood and neglected database features, however, database auditing is becoming a key requirement for many organizations compliance activities. This presentation will address four key topics related to database auditing: selecting the right auditing technology, determining the performance impact of auditing, protecting audit data, and reporting on audit data. To help in the selection of the proper database auditing solution, the major auditing technologies will be reviewed including native database auditing, Fine-Grained Auditing (FGA), custom triggers, Oracle Audit Vault, and third-party network and agent-based auditing solutions. To differentiate the auditing technologies, pros and cons for each solution will be presented along with performance detailed metrics for common auditing scenarios. Capturing audit data is actually the easy part and the hard part of any comprehensive auditing strategy is protecting the audit data and intelligently reporting on the audit data. Best practices for protecting the audit data and transforming audit data into actionable information will be presented.