Solaris™ 10 Security Essentials

9Auditing

Auditing is one of the more overlooked security features in the Solaris OS. It gives you the ability to collect data about security-related system events. The data is used for accountability purposes, and is used to assign responsibility for actions that take place on a host.

Auditing has been a security feature since SunOS 3.5e, and the current implementation has been in the Solaris OS since version 2.3. However, recent regulatory requirements, such as SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), which require that all activity on the systems be attributed to the users, have highlighted the necessity of auditing.

9.1 Introduction and Background

The Solaris Audit feature provides the ability ...