A record of an event made for purposes of maintaining a security log. Typical uses include detection of intrusion attempts and monitoring for inappropriate usage.

Based on ATNA (RFC 3881).

Identifier for a family of the event. For example, a menu item, program, rule, policy, function code, application name or URL. It identifies the performed function.

This identifies the performed function. For "Execute" Event Action Code audit records, this identifies the application function performed.

Identifier for the category of event.

This field enables queries of messages by implementation-defined event categories.

Indicator for type of action performed during the event that generated the audit.

This broadly indicates what kind of action was done on the AuditEvent.entity by the AuditEvent.agent.

The period during which the activity occurred.

The period can be a little arbitrary; where possible, the time should correspond to human assessment of the activity time.

The time when the event was recorded.

This ties an event to a specific date and time. Security audits typically require a consistent time base (e.g. UTC), to eliminate time-zone issues arising from geographical distribution.

In a distributed system, some sort of common time base (e.g. an NTP [RFC1305] server) is a good implementation tactic.

Indicates whether the event succeeded or failed.

In some cases a "success" may be partial, for example, an incomplete or interrupted transfer of a radiological study. For the purpose of establishing accountability, these distinctions are not relevant.

A free text description of the outcome of the event.

The purposeOfUse (reason) that was used during the event being recorded.

Use AuditEvent.agent.purposeOfUse when you know that it is specific to the agent, otherwise use AuditEvent.purposeOfEvent. For example, during a machine-to-machine transfer it might not be obvious to the audit system who caused the event, but it does know why.

An actor taking an active role in the event or activity that is logged.

An agent can be a person, an organization, software, device, or other actors that may be ascribed responsibility.

Several agents may be associated (i.e. have some responsibility for an activity) with an event or activity.

For example, an activity may be initiated by one user for other users or involve more than one user. However, only one user may be the initiator/requestor for the activity.

Specification of the participation type the user plays when performing the event.

The security role that the user was acting under, that come from local codes defined by the access control security system (e.g. RBAC, ABAC) used in the local context.

This value ties an audited event to a user's role(s). It is an optional value that might be used to group events for analysis by user functional role categories.

Should be roles relevant to the event. Should not be an exhaustive list of roles.

Direct reference to a resource that identifies the agent.

This field ties an audit event to a specific resource.

Unique identifier for the user actively participating in the event.

This field ties an audit event to a specific user.

A unique value within the Audit Source ID. For node-based authentication -- where only the system hardware or process, but not a human user, is identified -- User ID would be the node name.

Alternative agent Identifier. For a human, this should be a user identifier text string from authentication system. This identifier would be one known to a common authentication system (e.g. single sign-on), if available.

In some situations, a human user may authenticate with one identity but, to access a specific application system, may use a synonymous identify. For example, some "single sign on" implementations will do this. The alternative identifier would then be the original identify used for authentication, and the User ID is the one known to and used by the application.

Human-meaningful name for the agent.

The User ID and Authorization User ID may be internal or otherwise obscure values. This field assists the auditor in identifying the actual user.

Indicator that the user is or is not the requestor, or initiator, for the event being audited.

This value is used to distinguish between requestor-users and recipient-users. For example, one person may initiate a report-output to be sent to another user.

There can only be one initiator. If the initiator is not clear, then do not choose any one agent as the initiator.

Where the event occurred.

The policy or plan that authorized the activity being recorded. Typically, a single activity may have multiple applicable policies, such as patient consent, guarantor funding, etc. The policy would also indicate the security token used.

This value is used retrospectively to determine the authorization policies.

For example: Where an OAuth token authorizes, the unique identifier from the OAuth token is placed into the policy element Where a policy engine (e.g. XACML) holds policy logic, the unique policy identifier is placed into the policy element.

Type of media involved. Used when the event is about exporting/importing onto media.

Usually, this is used instead of specifying a network address. This field is not used for Media Id (i.e. the serial number of a CD).

Logical network location for application activity, if the activity has a network location.

An identifier for the network access point of the user device for the audit event.

This datum identifies the user's network access point, which may be distinct from the server that performed the action. It is an optional value that may be used to group events recorded on separate servers for analysis of a specific network access point's data access across all servers.

This could be a device id, IP address or some other identifier associated with a device.

An identifier for the type of network access point that originated the audit event.

This datum identifies the type of network access point identifier of the user device for the audit event. It is an optional value that may be used to group events recorded on separate servers for analysis of access according to a network access point's type.

The reason (purpose of use), specific to this agent, that was used during the event being recorded.

Use AuditEvent.agent.purposeOfUse when you know that is specific to the agent, otherwise use AuditEvent.purposeOfEvent. For example, during a machine-to-machine transfer it might not be obvious to the audit system who caused the event, but it does know why.

The system that is reporting the event.

The event is reported by one source.

Since multi-tier, distributed, or composite applications make source identification ambiguous, this collection of fields may repeat for each application or process actively involved in the event. For example, multiple value-sets can identify participating web servers, application processes, and database server threads in an n-tier distributed application. Passive event participants (e.g. low-level network transports) need not be identified.

Logical source location within the healthcare enterprise network. For example, a hospital or other provider location within a multi-entity provider group.

This value differentiates among the sites in a multi-site enterprise health information system.

Identifier of the source where the event was detected.

This field ties the event to a specific source system. It may be used to group events for analysis according to where the event was detected.

Code specifying the type of source where event originated.

This field indicates which type of source is identified by the Audit Source ID. It is an optional value that may be used to group events for analysis according to the type of source where the event occurred.

Specific instances of data or objects that have been accessed.

The event may have other entities involved.

Required unless the values for event identification, agent identification, and audit source identification are sufficient to document the entire auditable event. Because events may have more than one entity, this group can be a repeating set of values.

Identifies a specific instance of the entity. The reference should always be version specific.

Identifier detail depends on entity type.

Identifies a specific instance of the entity. The reference should be version specific.

The type of the object that was involved in this audit event.

To describe the object being acted upon. In addition to queries on the subject of the action in an auditable event, it is also important to be able to query on the object type for the action.

This value is distinct from the user's role or any user relationship to the entity.

Code representing the role the entity played in the event being audited.

For some detailed audit analysis it may be necessary to indicate a more granular type of entity, based on the application role it serves.

Identifier for the data life-cycle stage for the entity.

Institutional policies for privacy and security may optionally fall under different accountability rules based on data life cycle. This provides a differentiating value for those cases.

This can be used to provide an audit trail for data, over time, as it passes through the system.

Security labels for the identified entity.

This field identifies the security labels for a specific instance of an object, such as a patient, to detect/track privacy and security issues.

Copied from entity meta security tags.

A name of the entity in the audit event.

Use only where entity can't be identified with an identifier.

This field may be used in a query/report to identify audit events for a specific person. For example, where multiple synonymous entity identifiers (patient number, medical record number, encounter number, etc.) have been used.

Text that describes the entity in more detail.

Use only where entity can't be identified with an identifier.

The query parameters for a query-type entities.

For query events, it may be necessary to capture the actual query input to the query process in order to identify the specific event. Because of differences among query implementations and data encoding for them, this is a base 64 encoded data blob. It may be subsequently decoded or interpreted by downstream audit analysis processing.

The meaning and secondary-encoding of the content of base64 encoded blob is specific to the AuditEvent.type, AuditEvent.subtype, AuditEvent.entity.type, and AuditEvent.entity.role. The base64 is a general-use and safe container for event specific data blobs regardless of the encoding used by the transaction being recorded. An AuditEvent consuming application must understand the event it is consuming and the formats used by the event. For example if auditing an Oracle network database access, the Oracle formats must be understood as they will be simply encoded in the base64binary blob.

Tagged value pairs for conveying additional information about the entity.

Implementation-defined data about specific details of the object accessed or used.

The type of extra detail provided in the value.

The value of the extra detail.

Should not duplicate the entity value unless absolutely necessary.

The value can be string when known to be a string, else base64 encoding should be used to protect binary or undefined content. The meaning and secondary-encoding of the content of base64 encoded blob is specific to the AuditEvent.type, AuditEvent.subtype, AuditEvent.entity.type, and AuditEvent.entity.role. The base64 is a general-use and safe container for event specific data blobs regardless of the encoding used by the transaction being recorded. An AuditEvent consuming application must understand the event it is consuming and the formats used by the event. For example if auditing an Oracle network database access, the Oracle formats must be understood as they will be simply encoded in the base64binary blob.