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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
Audit masks and audit instructions
Audit instructions

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
    - 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 instructions

An audit administrator sets the audit instructions that the database server performs. The administrator must set an amount of auditing that is comprehensive enough to prove useful but not so exhaustive that it adversely affects system resources. When role separation exists, the DBSSO creates audit masks and the AAO configures mandatory auditing for the DBSA and the DBSSO. You can find advice on how to set the audit instructions in A Guide to Understanding Audit in Trusted Systems (published by the National Computer Security Center, NCSC-TG-001, June 1988).

This section suggests how to choose events to audit, how to set the audit instructions, and how the choices affect performance. For details of how to create and modify audit masks, see Audit administration.

All the audit masks that the database server uses are stored in the system-monitoring interface (SMI) sysaudit table in the sysmaster database. The masks are updated automatically when the database server is upgraded to a newer version. Although information stored in the sysmaster database is available through SQL, you must use the onaudit utility for all audit-mask creation and maintenance. (See The onaudit utility: Configure audit masks.) Also, see the description of the sysmaster database in the Informix® Administrator's Reference.