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NetBackup™ Security and Encryption Guide

Last Published: 2023-03-31

Product(s): NetBackup (10.2)

About NetBackup auditing

Auditing is enabled by default in new installations. NetBackup auditing can be configured directly on a NetBackup primary server.

Auditing of NetBackup operations provides the following benefits:

Customers can gain insight from audit trails while they investigate unexpected changes in a NetBackup environment.
Regulatory compliance.
The record complies with guidelines such as those required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).
A method for customers to adhere to internal change management policies.
Help for NetBackup Support in troubleshooting problems for customers.

About the NetBackup Audit Manager

The NetBackup Audit Manager (nbaudit) runs on the primary server and audit records are maintained in the Enterprise Media Manager (EMM) database.

An administrator can search specifically for:

When an action occurred
Failed actions in certain situations
The actions that a specific user performed
The actions that were performed in a specific content area
Changes to the audit configuration

Note the following:

The audit record truncates any entries greater than 4096 characters. (For example, policy name.)
The audit record truncates any restore image IDs greater than 1024 characters.

Actions that NetBackup audits

NetBackup records the following user-initiated actions.

Activity monitor actions	Canceling, suspending, resuming, restarting, or deleting any type of job creates an audit record.
Alerts and email notifications	If an alert cannot be generated or an email notification cannot be sent for NetBackup configuration settings. For example, SMTP server configuration and the list of excluded status codes for alerts.
Anomalies	When a user reports an anomaly as false positive, the action is audited and logged for that user.
Asset actions	Deleting an asset, such as a vCenter server, as part of the asset cleanup process is audited and logged. Creating, modifying, or deleting an asset group as well any action on an asset group for which a user is not authorized is audited and logged.
Authorization failure	Authorization failure is audited when you use the NetBackup web UI, the NetBackup APIs, or Enhanced Auditing. See About Enhanced Auditing.
Catalog information	This information includes: Verifying and expiring images. Read the requests that are sent for the front-end usage data.
Certificate management	Creating, revoking, renewing, and deploying of NetBackup certificates and specific NetBackup certificate failures.
Certificate Verification Failures (CVFs)	Any failed connection attempts that involve SSL handshake errors, revoked certificates, or host name validation failures. For certificate verification failures (CVFs) that involve SSL handshakes and revoked certificates, the timestamp indicates when the audit record is posted to the primary server. (Rather than when an individual certificate verification fails.) A CVF audit record represents a group of CVF events over a time period. The record details provide the start and the end times of the time period as well as the total number of CVFs that occurred in that period.
Disk pools and Volume pools actions	Adding, deleting, or updating disk or volume pools.
Hold operations	Creating, modifying, and deleting hold operations.
Host database	NetBackup operations that are related to the host database.
IRE configuration and states	Adding, updating, and deleting IRE allowed subnets or schedule. IRE external network is opened or closed by IRE schedule or by an administrator.
Logon attempts	Any successful or any failed logon attempts for the NetBackup web UI or the NetBackup APIs.
Policies actions	Adding, deleting, or updating policy attributes, clients, schedules, and backup selections lists.
Restore and browse image user actions	All the restore and browse image content (bplist) operations that a user performs are audited with the user identity. To set an interval to periodically add audit records of the browse image (bplist) operations from the cache into the NetBackup database, use the DATAACCESS_AUDIT_INTERVAL_HOURS configuration option. Setting this configuration option prevents the NetBackup database size from increasing exponentially because of the bplist audit records. See the NetBackup Administrator's Guide Volume I. To add all the bplist audit records from the cache into the NetBackup database, run the following command on the primary server: nbcertcmd -postAudit -dataAccess
Security configuration	Information that is related to changes that are made to the security configuration settings.
Starting a restore job	NetBackup does not audit when other types of jobs begin. For example, NetBackup does not audit when a backup job begins.
Starting and stopping the NetBackup Audit Manager (nbaudit).	Starting and stopping of the nbaudit manager is always audited, even if auditing is disabled.
Storage lifecycle policy actions	Attempts to create, modify, or delete a storage lifecycle policy (SLP) are audited and logged. However, activating and suspending an SLP using the command nbstlutil are not audited. These operations are audited only when they are initiated from a NetBackup graphical user interface or API.
Storage servers actions	Adding, deleting, or updating storage servers.
Storage units actions	Adding, deleting, or updating storage units. Note: Actions that are related to storage lifecycle policies are not audited.
Token management	Creating, deleting, and cleanup of tokens and specific token issuing failures.
User management	Adding and deleting Enhanced Auditing users in the Enhanced Auditing mode.
User action that fails to create an audit record	If auditing is enabled but a user action fails to create an audit record, the audit failure is captured in the `nbaudit` log. NetBackup status code 108 is returned (Action succeeded but auditing failed). The NetBackup does not return an exit status code 108 when auditing fails.

Actions that NetBackup does not audit

The following actions are not audited and do not display in the audit report:

Any failed actions.	NetBackup logs failed actions in NetBackup error logs. Failed actions do not display in audit reports because a failed attempt does not bring about a change in the NetBackup system state.
The effect of a configuration change	The results of a change to the NetBackup configuration are not audited. For example, the creation of a policy is audited, but the jobs that result from its creation are not.
The completion status of a manually initiated restore job	While the act of initiating a restore job is audited, the completion status of the job is not audited. Nor is the completion status of any other job type, whether initiated manually or not. The completion status is displayed in the Activity Monitor.
Internally initiated actions	NetBackup-initiated internal actions are not audited. For example, the scheduled deletion of expired images, scheduled backups, or periodic image database cleanup is not audited.
Rollback operations	Some operations are carried out as multiple steps. For example, creating an MSDP-based storage server consists of multiple steps. Every successful step is audited. Failure in any of the steps results in a rollback, or rather, the successful steps may need to be undone. The audit record does not contain details about rollback operations.
Host properties actions	Changes made with the bpsetconfig or the nbsetconfig commands, or the equivalent property in host properties, are not audited. Changes that are made directly to the bp.conf file or to the registry are not audited.