Title

PostgreSQL must provide an immediate alert to appropriate support staff of all audit log failures. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

It is critical for the appropriate personnel to be aware if a system is at risk of failing to process audit logs as required. Without a real-time alert, security personnel may be unaware of an impending failure of the audit capability, and system operation may be adversely affected. The appropriate support staff include, at a minimum, the Information System Security Officer (ISSO) and the database administrator (DBA)/systems administrator (SA). A failure of database auditing will result in either the database continuing to function without auditing or in a complete halt to database operations. When audit processing fails, appropriate personnel must be alerted immediately to avoid further downtime or unaudited transactions. Alerts provide organizations with urgent messages. Real-time alerts provide these messages immediately (i.e., the time from event detection to alert occurs in seconds or less). The necessary monitoring and alerts may be implemented using features of PostgreSQL, the OS, third-party software, custom code, or a combination of these. The term "the system" is used to encompass all of these.

Check Content

Review DBMS, OS, or third-party logging software settings to determine whether a real-time alert will be sent to the appropriate personnel when auditing fails for any reason. If real-time alerts are not sent upon auditing failure, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure the system to provide an immediate real-time alert to appropriate support staff when an audit log failure occurs. It is possible to create scripts or implement third-party tools to enable real-time alerting for audit failures in PostgreSQL.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-233535r879733_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-233535

Group Title: SRG-APP-000360-DB-000320

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.