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Security
You can secure your Informix® database server and the data that is stored in your Informix databases. You can encrypt data, secure connections, control user privileges and access, and audit data security.
Security in HCL Informix®
The Informix® Security Guide documents methods for keeping your data secure by preventing unauthorized viewing and altering of data or database objects, including how to use the secure-auditing facility of the database server.
Auditing data security
Overview of auditing with the Informix® secure auditing facility
Secure-auditing facility
Audit process
When you turn on auditing, the database server generates audit records for every event that the auditing instructions specify.

Security
You can secure your Informix® database server and the data that is stored in your Informix databases. You can encrypt data, secure connections, control user privileges and access, and audit data security.
- Security in HCL Informix®
  The Informix® Security Guide documents methods for keeping your data secure by preventing unauthorized viewing and altering of data or database objects, including how to use the secure-auditing facility of the database server.
  - Securing data
  - Auditing data security
    - Overview of auditing with the Informix® secure auditing facility
      - Secure-auditing facility
        Audit events
        Audit masks
        Selective row-level auditing
        Auditing can be configured so that row-level events of only selected tables are recorded in the audit trail. Selective row-level auditing can compact audit records so that they are more manageable and potentially improve database server performance.
        Audit process
        When you turn on auditing, the database server generates audit records for every event that the auditing instructions specify.
        Audit trail
      - Roles for database server and audit administration
      - Audit masks and audit instructions
      - Audit configuration
      - Audit analysis overview
      - DBMS security threats
    - Audit administration
    - Audit analysis
    - The onaudit utility
      Use the onaudit utility to manage audit masks and auditing configuration.
    - The onshowaudit utility
      Use the onshowaudit utility to view the audit information from an existing audit trail. You can use this command to extract information for a particular user, database server, or both, making it possible to isolate a particular subset of data from a potentially large audit trail.
    - Audit event codes and fields
      The secure-auditing facility audits certain database server events.
    - The ADTCFG file

Audit process

When you turn on auditing, the database server generates audit records for every event that the auditing instructions specify.

The database server stores the audit records in an audit file. The collection of audit records makes up the audit trail. (The audit trail might consist of more than one audit file.)

This graphic is described in surrounding text. — Figure 1. The audit process

An audit administrator must specify and maintain the audit configuration, which includes the following information:

The audit mode
How the database server behaves if it encounters an error when writing audit records to the audit trail
For UNIX™, the directory in which the audit trail is located
For UNIX™, the maximum size of an audit file before the database server automatically starts another audit file

These topics are explained in Audit configuration.

The database server generates audit records and writes them to the audit file or to an event log regardless of whether the client user that performs the audited action is local or remote. The database server includes both the user login and database server name in every audit record to help pinpoint a specific initiator and action.