AWS – Amazon RDS supports MariaDB Audit Plugin for MySQL version 8.0

The MariaDB audit plug-in is now available for Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for MySQL instances using MySQL major version 8.0. The MariaDB audit plug-in is also available for instances using MySQL major versions 5.6 and 5.7, and provides event logging for database activity to help customers meet compliance and audit requirements, and troubleshoot application issues. Some of the key details for implementing the plugin are:

Enabling and disabling the audit plug-in – Users can enable audit plug-in by creating an option group, adding MARIADB_AUDIT_PLUGIN option to the group, and attaching the option group to an RDS instance. Audit logging can be disabled by removing the option group from the instance.

SERVER_AUDIT_EVENTS variables – These variables allow users to specify the events they want to include in the logs (CONNECTION: users connecting and disconnecting, QUERY: queries and their result, and TABLE: which tables are affected by the queries).

SERVER_AUDIT_EXCL_USERS and SERVER_AUDIT_INCL_USERS variables – These variables specify which users’ activity should be excluded from or included in the audit. SERVER_AUDIT_INCL_USERS has higher priority and all users’ activity is recorded by default.

Read More for the details.