PostgreSQL must provide an immediate real-time alert to appropriate support staff of all audit log failures.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-261920	SRG-APP-000360-DB-000320	CD16-00-007400	SV-261920r1000973_rule	2024-06-17	1

Description
It is critical for the appropriate personnel to be aware if a system is at risk of failing to process audit logs as required. Without a real-time alert, security personnel may be unaware of an impending failure of the audit capability, and system operation may be adversely affected. The appropriate support staff include, at a minimum, the information system security officer (ISSO) and the database administrator (DBA)/system administrator (SA). A failure of database auditing will result in either the database continuing to function without auditing or in a complete halt to database operations. When audit processing fails, appropriate personnel must be alerted immediately to avoid further downtime or unaudited transactions. Alerts provide organizations with urgent messages. Real-time alerts provide these messages immediately (i.e., the time from event detection to alert occurs in seconds or less).

Description

It is critical for the appropriate personnel to be aware if a system is at risk of failing to process audit logs as required. Without a real-time alert, security personnel may be unaware of an impending failure of the audit capability, and system operation may be adversely affected. The appropriate support staff include, at a minimum, the information system security officer (ISSO) and the database administrator (DBA)/system administrator (SA). A failure of database auditing will result in either the database continuing to function without auditing or in a complete halt to database operations. When audit processing fails, appropriate personnel must be alerted immediately to avoid further downtime or unaudited transactions. Alerts provide organizations with urgent messages. Real-time alerts provide these messages immediately (i.e., the time from event detection to alert occurs in seconds or less).

ℹ️ Check
Review PostgreSQL, OS, or third-party logging software settings to determine whether a real-time alert will be sent to the appropriate personnel when auditing fails for any reason. If real-time alerts are not sent upon auditing failure, this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
Configure the system to provide an immediate real-time alert to appropriate support staff when an audit log failure occurs. It is possible to create scripts or implement third-party tools to enable real-time alerting for audit failures in PostgreSQL.