Re: audit response

> I disagree with Brian, actually. Trust doesn't have to come into it, and if
> security is really needed, it shouldn't.

Someone has to have the keys to the kingdom. But you don't just give those keys to anybody.

There is some level of trust between the employer and the employee, no matter what the job entails. The shareholders trust that the board and the CEO will do the right things to make a profit. The CEO trusts the VP's of the company to hire good managers. The managers hire DBAs, etc and trust that they will do the right things for their company's databases. Etc, etc, etc.

> In other words, by separating the functions of sysadmins and DBAs, and by
> investing in the latest releases of the software, you *can* audit SYS
> activity, reliably and securely.
>
> Sure, the DBA could modify the init.ora, and set the audit option to
> false... but then you make that a disciplinary offence.

Right there is one level of trust. You know that the DBA can modify the INIT.ORA. You know that they can take certain steps. If they bypass those steps that are in your company's policies, you take appropriate, maybe disciplinary, action. So even by your own words, you have placed a certain level of trust in your DBAs hands and if they violate that trust, you take appropriate action.  

> In this day and age, any secure system that relies ultimately on trust
> isn't secure.

I don't think that anyone said anything about relying ultimately on trust. We have passwords. If we relied ultimately on trust, everyone would be given the DBA account and allowed to roam freely. But we put our database servers behind locked doors so that Joe Employee can't come in and pull the plug. And as I said, "no system in our building does not have an entry point that has complete control over that system." So while an effort is made to make sure that the database is as secure as possible, there is always at least one entry point that can bypass those security measures. There is nothing to stop a DBA from deleting all of the company's data. So you trust that DBA to not delete data that is not supposed to be deleted. There is always a level of trust given to an employee for some aspect of their job, until they violate that trust.

Cheers,
Brian

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Brian Peasland
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