Auditing on z/OS

Advanced Message Security (AMS) for z/OS provides a means for optional auditing of operations by applications on policy protected queues. When enabled, IBM System Management Facility (SMF) audit records are generated for the success and failure of these operations on policy-protected queues. Operations audited include MQPUT, MQPUT1, and MQGET.

Auditing is disabled by default, however, we can activate auditing by configuring _AMS_SMF_TYPE and _AMS_SMF_AUDIT in the configured Language Environment _CEE_ENVFILE file for the AMS address space. For more information, see Create procedures for Advanced Message Security. The _AMS_SMF_TYPE variable is used to designate the SMF record type and is a number between 128 and 255. A SMF record type of 180 is usual, however is not mandatory. Auditing is disabled by specifying a value of 0. The _AMS_SMF_AUDIT variable configures whether audit records are created for operations that are successful, operations that fail, or both. The auditing options can also be dynamically changed while AMS is active using operator commands. For more information, see Operate Advanced Message Security.

The SMF record is defined using subtypes, with subtype 1 being a general auditing event. The SMF record contains all data relevant to the request being processed.

The SMF record is mapped by the CSQ0KSMF macro (note the zero in the macro name), which is provided in the target library SCSQMACS. If we are writing data-reduction programs for SMF data, we can include this mapping macro to aid in the development and customization of SMF post-processing routines.

In the SMF records produced by Advanced Message Security for z/OS, the data is organized into sections. The record consists of:

  • a standard SMF header
  • a header extension defined by Advanced Message Security for z/OS
  • a product section
  • a data section

The product section of the SMF record is always present in the records produced by Advanced Message Security for z/OS. The data section varies based on subtype. Currently, one subtype is defined and therefore a single data section is used.

SMF is described in the z/OS System Management Facilities manual (SA22-7630). Valid record types are described in the SMFPRMxx member of our system PARMLIB data set. See SMF documentation for more information.


Advanced Message Security audit report generator (CSQ0USMF)

Advanced Message Security for z/OS provides an audit report generator tool called CSQ0USMF which is provided in the installation SCSQAUTH library. Sample JCL to run the CSQ0USMF utility called CSQ40RSM is provided in the installation library SCSQPROC.

Before running the CSQ0USMF utility, the SMF type 180 records must be dumped from the system SMF data sets to a sequential data set. As an example, this JCL dumps SMF type 180 records from an SMF data set, and transfers them to a target data set: 
//IFAUDUMP EXEC PGM=IFASMFDP
//INDD1 DD DSN=SYSn.MANn.syst,DISP=SHR
//OUTDD1 DD DSN=your.target.dataset,DISP=SHR
//SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=*
//SYSIN DD *
INDD(INDD1,OPTIONS(DUMP))
OUTDD(OUTDD1,TYPE(180))
/*
We must verify the actual SMF data set names used by your installation. The target data set for the dumped records must have a record format of VBS, and a record length of 32760. The target data set can then be used as input to the CSQ0USMF utility to produce an AMS audit report. For example: 
//STEP1 EXEC PGM=CSQ0USMF,
// PARM=('/ -SMFTYPE 180 -M qmgr')
//STEPLIB DD DSN=thlqual.SCSQANLE,DISP=SHR
//    DD DSN=thlqual.SCSQAUTH,DISP=SHR
//SMFIN DD DSN=your.target.dataset,DISP=SHR
//
The CSQ0USMF program accepts two optional parameters, which are listed in Table 1:

Parameter Value Description
SMFTYPE nnn The SMF record type applicable to the audit report. The CSQ0USMF program uses only SMF records that match the SMFTYPE value when generating the report. If we do not specify SMFTYPE, a default value of 180 is used.
M qmgr The IBM MQ queue manager name applicable to the audit report. If we do not specify the -M parameter, the audit report will include all audit records for all queue managers represented in the SMFIN data set.
Parent topic: Advanced Message Security