Kisco Refines IBM i Database Auditing Tool

July 10, 2012 Alex Woodie

In today’s highly regulated business environment, organizations are increasingly required to restrict access to data, and to track any changes that users make to the database. From time to time, activity that is unusual but nonetheless authorized will be flagged as suspicious. Last week, Kisco Information Systems unveiled a new release of its IBM i data auditing tool, iFileAudit, that makes it easier to deal with these types of situations.

iFileAudit is a handy database auditing tool designed to provide a complete trail of changes made to data in DB2/400, at the field, record, and file levels. The product, which relies on journaling, also tracks the user profile, program, location, or job involved in the change, allowing HIPAA, SOX, or PCI auditors to get a very clear and detailed picture of the activities surrounding IBM i data in a production environment.

With iFileAudit Release 5, Kisco has added the capability to attach audit notes to specific filed updates after they have been recorded by the software. The Upstate New York vendor says this note-taking capability will come in handy in cases when iFileAudit flags suspicious-looking activity that upon further review is fully authorized and completely aboveboard.

Several other features were also added to the product, including support for the SSL-enabled HTTPS protocol when using the Web browser interface. The software also sports a green-screen interface.

Configuring the software in environments with a large number of files should be easier thanks to a new setup feature that enables users to create a user profile filter set for an individual file, and then use that setup as a template, Kisco says.

In terms of data types and files, the software now supports BLOB (binary large object) files; databases that use UCS_2 Unicode content encoding at the field level; and files with keys up to 128 characters in length (the previous limit was 60).

iFileAudit Release 5 is available now. Pricing is a flat $1,295 for a single LPAR on an IBM i server, or $2,195 for multiple LPARs on a single machine. For more information see the vendor’s website at www.kisco.com.