Configuring auditable events using scripting

Before enabling security auditing, use this task to configure event filters using the wsadmin tool. Security auditing provides tracking and archiving of auditable events.

Before you begin

Before configuring security auditing filters, enable administrative security in your environment.

About this task

Before configuring an audit event factory and audit service provider, configure event filters. The audit service provider writes audit records to the back end repository associated with the provider implementation. The audit event factory generates security events. Event filters specify which event types and outcomes the system audits and records. Each event type has up to seven possible outcomes, including success, failure, denied, error, warning, info, and redirect. The security auditing configuration provides four default filters. Use this topic to customize your security auditing subsystem by creating additional audit event filters.

Use the following steps to configure your security auditing subsystem using the wsadmin tool:

Procedure

  1. Launch the wsadmin scripting tool using the Jython scripting language. See the Starting the wsadmin scripting client article for more information.
  2. Configure event filters. You can use the default event filters or use this step to create additional filters to customize your security auditing configuration.
    Table 1. Provided event filters . The application server provides the following event filters by default in the audit.xml template file:
    Event Name Outcome of event
    SECURITY_AUTHN SUCCESS
    SECURITY_AUTHN DENIED
    SECURITY_RESOURCE_ACCESS SUCCESS
    SECURITY_AUTHN REDIRECT
    You can configure additional audit event types to capture various events. Use the following command to list all supported auditable events:
    print AdminTask.getSupportedAuditEvents()
    Use the createAuditFilter command with the -name, -eventType, and -outcome parameters to enable one or multiple audit events and outcomes. You can specify multiple event types and multiple outcomes separated by a comma with one command invocation.
    Table 2. Event types . The following list describes each valid auditable event that you can specify with the -eventType parameter:
    Event name Description
    SECURITY_AUTHN Audits all authentication events
    SECURITY_AUTHN_MAPPING Audits events that record mapping of credentials where two user identities are involved
    SECURITY_AUTHZ Audits events related to authorization checks when the system enforces access control policies
    SECURITY_MGMT_AUDIT Audits events that record operations related to the audit subsystem such as starting audit, stopping audit, turning audit on or off, changing configuration of audit filters or level, archiving audit data, purging audit data, and so on.
    SECURITY_RESOURCE_ACCESS Audits events that record all accesses to a resource. Examples are all accesses to a file, all HTTP requests and responses to a given web page, and all accesses to a critical database table
    SECURITY_AUTHN_DELEGATION Audits events that record delegation, including identity assertion, RunAs, and low assertion. Used when the client identity is propagated or when delegation involves the use of a special identity. This event type is also used when switching user identities within a given session.
    For each audit event type, you must specify an outcome. Valid outcomes include SUCCESS, FAILURE, REDIRECT, ERROR, DENIED, WARNING, and INFO. The following command example creates an audit filter to log users who receive an error when modifying credentials: 
    AdminTask.createAuditFilter('-name myUniqueName -eventType SECURITY_RESOURCE_ACCESS,SECURITY_AUTHN_DELEGATION -outcome ERROR,REDIRECT')
  3. Save your configuration changes.
    Use the following command example to save your configuration changes:
    AdminConfig.save()

What to do next

Enable security auditing in your environment.