Enabling security auditing using scripting

Use this task to enable and configure security auditing in your environment with the wsadmin tool. Security auditing provides tracking and archiving of auditable events.

Before you begin

Before enabling security auditing, enable administrative security in your environment.

If you previously configured security auditing and do not want to modify configuration settings, use the enableAudit and disableAudit commands to start and stop security auditing. After enabling or disabling security auditing, restart the server to apply the configuration changes.

About this task

Security auditing ensures the integrity of a security computing environment. Security auditing collects and logs authentication, authorization, system management, security, and audit policy events in audit event records. You can analyze audit event records to determine possible security breaches, threats, attacks, and potential weaknesses in the security configuration of your environment.

Use the following steps to enable and configure security auditing in your environment:

Procedure

  1. Launch the wsadmin scripting tool using the Jython scripting language. See the Starting the wsadmin scripting client article for more information.
  2. Verify that the security auditing subsystem is configured.

    To enable security auditing, you must configure event filters, an audit emitter, and an audit event factory. Event filters specify which event types the system audits and records, and the outcome of the event. The audit service provider writes the audit records to the backend repository that is associated with the implementation. The audit event factory generates security events.

    By default, the security auditing system includes one audit service provider and one audit event factory.

    The audit command groups provide several commands to query for event filters, audit emitters, event factories, and their respective configuration attributes. Use the audit command reference to use specific query commands. The following example commands query your security auditing configuration at a high level.
    • Use the getAuditFilters command to display a list of references to all audit filters defined in your configuration, as the following example demonstrates:
      AdminTask.getAuditFilters()
    • Use the listAuditEmitters command to display a list of all audit emitters in your configuration, as the following example demonstrates:
      AdminTask.listAuditEmitters()
    • Use the listAuditEventFactories command to display a list of all audit event factories in your configuration, as the following example demonstrates:
      AdminTask.listAuditEventFactories()
  3. Enable security auditing in your environment. Use the modifyAuditPolicy command to enable security auditing in your environment.
    Table 1. Command parameters.

    Use the following optional parameters for the modifyAuditPolicy command to customize your security auditing configuration:

    Parameter Description Data type Required
    -auditEnabled Specifies whether to enable security auditing. Boolean No
    -auditPolicy Specifies the behavior of the server process if the audit subsystem fails. Valid values are: WARN, NOWARN and FATAL. The WARN setting notifies the auditor when an error occurs and ceases auditing when an error occurs in the audit sub-system, but continues to run the application server process. The NOWARN setting does not notify the auditor when an error occurs and ceases auditing, but continues to run the application server process. The FATAL setting notifies the auditor of the error and stops the application server process. By default, the command assigns the NOWARN setting. String No
    -auditorId Specifies the ID of the user to assign to the auditor role. String No
    -auditorPwd Specifies the password for the auditor role. String No
    -sign Specifies whether to sign audit records. By default, the security auditing system does not sign audit records. You must configure the signing of audit records before you can specify this parameter. Boolean No
    -encrypt Specifies whether to encrypt audit records. By default, the security auditing system does not encrypt audit records. You must configure encryption for audit records before you can specify this parameter. Boolean No
    -verbose Specifies whether to capture verbose audit data. By default, the security auditing system does not capture verbose audit data. Boolean No
    -encryptionCert Specifies the reference ID of the certificate to use for encryption. Specify this parameter if you set the -encrypt parameter to true. String No
    The following example command enables security auditing, and identifies the primary auditor by assigning a user and password.
    AdminTask.modifyAuditPolicy('-auditEnabled true -auditorId securityAdmin -auditorPwd security4you')
  4. Save your configuration changes.
    Use the following command example to save your configuration changes:
    AdminConfig.save()
  5. Restart the server.

Results

After completing the steps to enable and configure security auditing, the profile of interest audits your security configurations for specific auditable event types.

What to do next

After you configure the audit policy for the first time, use the enableAudit and disableAudit commands to turn the security auditing system on and off. The system maintains the settings that you define with the modifyAuditPolicy command when you enable and disable the security auditing system.
Note: You must restart the server to apply the configuration changes.



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Last updated: Oct 21, 2010 1:44:59 AM CDT
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