Oracle Label Security auditing supplements standard Oracle Database auditing by tracking use of its own administrative operations and policy privileges.

You can use either the SA_AUDIT_ADMIN package or Oracle Enterprise Manager to set and change the auditing options for an Oracle Label Security policy.

When you create a new policy, a label column for that policy is added to the database audit trail. The label column is created regardless of whether auditing is enabled or disabled, and independent of whether database auditing or operating system auditing is used. Whenever a record is written to the audit table, each policy provides a label for that record to indicate the session label. The administrator can create audit views to display these labels. Note that in the audit table, the label does not control access to the row, instead it only records the sensitivity of the row.

The auditing options that you specify apply only to subsequent sessions, not to the current session. You can specify audit options even if auditing is disabled. No overhead is created by making only these specifications. When you do enable Oracle Label Security auditing, the options come into effect, and overhead is created beyond that created by standard Oracle Database auditing.

Note that Oracle Label Security does not provide labels for audit data written to the operating system audit trial. All Oracle Label Security audit records are written directly to the database audit trail, even if operating system auditing is enabled. If auditing is disabled, then no Oracle Label Security audit records are generated.

If you are using traditional auditing (not unified auditing), then the traditional audit trail lists only the action numbers. To find the corresponding audit action names, you can query the LABACSYS.OLS$AUDIT_ACTIONS system table. You must have the AUDIT_VIEWER, AUDIT_ADMIN, or policy_DBA role to query this table.

If you have not yet enabled unified auditing, for Oracle Label Security to generate audit records, you must first enable system-wide auditing.

To enable system-wide auditing, you can set the Oracle Database AUDIT_TRAIL initialization parameter in the database's parameter file.

You can set the AUDIT_TRAIL parameter to one of the following values:

After you have edited the parameter file, restart the database instance to enable or disable database auditing as specified.

Set the AUDIT_TRAIL parameter before you set audit options. If you do not set this parameter, then you are still able to set audit options. However, audit records are not written to the database until the parameter is set and the database instance is restarted.

After you have enabled systemwide auditing, you can enable or disable Oracle Label Security auditing.

To use Oracle Label Security auditing, you must have the policy_DBA role and use the SA_AUDIT_ADMIN PL/SQL package procedures.

Oracle Database uses the unified audit trail to capture information from various audit sources, including Oracle Label Security.

You can configure OLS auditing using audit policies. Oracle Label Security auditing in Oracle Database 12c release 1 (12.1) enables you to audit additional events such as enabling and disabling of OLS policies.

If you have upgraded your database to Oracle Database 12c release 1 (12.1), but have not configured it to use unified auditing, then you must use the pre-12c OLS auditing described in this chapter.

The Oracle Database audit facility lets you hold database users accountable for the operations they perform. It can track specific database objects, operations, users, and privileges. Oracle Label Security supplements this by tracking use of its own administrative operations and policy privileges. It provides the SA_AUDIT_ADMIN package to set and change the policy auditing options.

Oracle provides a set of tips for auditing Oracle Label Security.

• Strategy for Setting SA_AUDIT_ADMIN Options
  Before setting any audit options, you must devise an auditing strategy that monitors events of interest, without recording extraneous events.
• Auditing of Privileged Operations
  Consider auditing any operations that require Oracle Label Security privileges.