iSeries Audit – Enforcive

Enforcive/Enterprise Security's File Audit is a powerful iSeries security software tool allowing monitoring of database changes showing not just who, when and where the changes were made but also the field values in the records involved. File Audit is one of those unique iSeries tools that, once you get used to using it, you'll wonder how you ever managed an iSeries Audit without it.

Journaling is an OS400 system-supplied mechanism that can be used to some degree to audit AS400 file contents. But iSeries journaling has limited usability as a data auditing tool due to its inherent nature of containing the entire journaled record in a flat format. This stems from the fact the journaling was developed primarily as a backup mechanism - for rolling back transactions when necessary and restoring file contents in recovery operations. Its use as an iSeries audit tool for data takes a clear second place.

Enforcive File Audit is a comprehensive file auditing application that incorporates IBM's journaling technology within it. It allows you to look at all the changes made on an iSeries file at the file, member, record and field level. An example of record operations can be seen below.

The displayed file actions can be fine-filtered by journal, receiver, file, actions, time, user, program and job.

Double-clicking on a file action will show all the information for the action, including the values in the record. The record update shown below marks all the fields in the record that were changed in the update operation.

Management of journals is another of File Audit's capabilities. New journals can be created, new receivers can be attached, old ones removed and files can be added and removed from the journal. These management functions are done visually through the easy-to-understand PC GUI and give administrators with only a limited knowledge of OS400 system commands the ability to understand and work with AS400 file journaling.

More complex iSeries audit reporting for file actions is provided in the report generator. For example, you can include several different files in the same report and you can list only the fields whose value has changed.

For more information on iSeries audit, AS400 monitoring and other Enforcive data security software products, contact us without delay.