RE: Sarbanes Oxley reporting

Your auditors seem to want a lot more information than ours do (at least from a database standpoint). Last audit I was asked for backup logs for 25 random dates and a system generated list of DBA accounts. I guess that's the problem with Sox, they don't really know what they want.  

Brian  

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Jared Still Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 10:48 AM To: Oracle-L Freelists
Subject: Sarbanes Oxley reporting  

Those of you that work in the USA, or even for USA based companies know what I'm referring to here.

I am curious what type of reporting you do to document the tests for your SOX controls in regards to Oracle databases.

The Sarbanes Oxley legislation is rather loosely written, leaving its interpretation pretty much open to negotiation between a company and its auditors.

The reason for asking is that my reports have been accused of being too verbose, or rather, have too much data, and not enough information.

I disagree, and if anyone reading them would simply read the instructions on the first page, they would not have so much difficulty.

But I digress.

It would be most interesting to see what kind of reports others are using to Satisfy SOX requirements for Oracle.

Comments on possibly improving the reports I am currently generating would also be welcome.

The following types of reports for Sarbanes Oxley are supplied for various tests throughout the year. All are in Excel.

Each Excel file is for a single database.

• database_roles.xls - a list of all roles, with all privileges granted to all roles. It is recursive, in that when a role is assigned to a role, it can be clicked on to drill down on the privileges. One role per page.

This one does require some guidance if the auditor is unfamiliar with the privileges.

• oar.xls - oracle application roles - (something of a misnomer here) This Excel file includes the following worksheets:

  System Accounts: All known Oracle/Application/Busisness specific   database accounts are documented here, with the account owner and purpose.
  eg. SYSTEM, SCOTT, SAPR3, FNDAPP, etc. accounts

  Known Roles : Similar to System Accounts, but for Database Roles

  Account Reconciliation: List of accounts in the database. Those not found
  in the System Accounts worksheet are flagged in Red.

  Access Reconciliation: Roles assigned to accounts. Accounts not found   in the System Accounts worksheet are flagged in Red.

  Role2User: Roles assigned to users/roles, in ROLE order. Unknown accounts
  flagged in red.

  Role2Privilege: Similar to Role2User, but for individual privileges.

  User2Privilege: Similar to Role2User, but for user/role mapping to   privileges, in user/role order.

• ora_parms.xls - database parameters report. This reports those parameters that are deemed relevant to security. eg. REMOTE_OS_AUTHENT
• profiles.xls - report on database profiles one page for each profile (including DEFAULT) and a page for the function used for password verification for each profile.
• sessaud.xls - report on logons/logon attempts basically a dump of dba_audit_sessions for the relevant time period. Not really much use other than as evidence of which accounts have logged on to the database. Excel's autofilter feature makes it easy to see the list of accounts that have logged on.
• baseline.xls - this report details what objects have changed in the database, and when. One worksheet for each type of object. Ideally one should be able to trace a changed object back to a change control ticket.

Changed/new/deleted objects are highlighted in blue.

---

That does it for my reports.  I'm looking for ideas on
how to consolidate this data into something auditor are
more likely to read without looking quite so confused 
when doing so.

Discussion of how others are satisfying SOX reporting 
requirements for Oracle databases should be interesting
and useful.


Jared


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