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Auditing and Forensic Analysis

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems
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Synonyms

Accountability; Monitoring

Definition

The goal of database auditing is to retain a secure record of database operations that can be used to verify compliance with desired security policies, to trace policy violations, or to detect anomalous patterns of access. An audit log can contain the authorization ID and time stamp of read and write operations in the database, as well as a record of server connections, login attempts and authorization changes. Government and institutional regulations for the management of sensitive information often require auditing of data disclosure and data modification.

Database forensicsis the analysis of the state of a database system to validate hypotheses about past events that are relevant to an alleged crime or violation of policy. Evidence supporting a forensic analysis may be found in an audit log (if available) but may also be recovered from any other component of a database system including table storage, the transaction log, temporary...

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Recommended Reading

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Correspondence to Brian Levine .

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Levine, B., Miklau, G. (2018). Auditing and Forensic Analysis. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_30

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