Policy 924 - Audit Logging and Reporting Policy

Section: Information Technology
Policy Number: 924
Responsible Office: Information Technology
Effective Date: 5/1/19
Revised: 5/1/19; 6/11/20

Policy Statement

The purpose of this policy is to establish practices for the monitoring and secure logging of all system events throughout St. John’s University (St. John’s). In order to ensure that St. John’s information assets are secure, it is necessary to monitor the activities of both authorized and unauthorized users to identify any actions that do not present a secure use of St. John’s information systems and ensure immediate response should any suspicious incident occurs.

Scope and Applicability

This policy is applicable to the St. John’s Information Technology (IT) department, but its scope covers the entire University Community. Adherence to this policy helps safeguard the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of St. John’s information assets, and protects the interest of St. John’s, its customers, personnel, and business partners.

Policy

Audit Logging

When there is an incident of any system/service failures and/or security breaches, logs are a crucial factor in providing the source of information to track the trails of the incidents. Therefore, logs must be captured and be accessible for all St. John’s systems. Captured data must be stored in accordance with St. John’s data retention schedule. 

St. John’s ensures that all clients, servers and other equipment (such as network routers and switches) involved in hosting the storage or processing of classified information have the available audit logging facilities activated to allow the recording and monitoring of activities.

Monitoring System Use

A Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) tool is used to identify and alert operations staff to events worth immediate investigation, and to find potential links between events on multiple systems. 

Protection of Log Information

Log information is maintained in accordance with standards and must be readily accessible. Strict access permissions are used to ensure that the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the log contents are secured. Logs are securely stored to protect them from unauthorized access.  Appropriate access controls are in place to prevent log data from being used for unauthorized purposes.

Definitions

The following are the definitions relevant to the policy:

  • Computing Resources: All St. John’s information processing resources including all St. John’s owned, licensed, or managed computing services, hardware, software, and use of St. John’s network via physical or wireless connection regardless of the ownership of the computer or device connected to the network.
     
  • Institutional Data: All data owned or licensed by St. John’s.
     
  • University Community: Includes faculty, administrators, staff, student workers, graduate/technical assistants, alumni, interns, guests or agents of the administration, external individuals and organizations accessing St. John’s network services, and other authorized users.

Compliance

St. John’s reserves the right to audit networks and systems on a periodic basis to ensure compliance with this policy. Instances of non-compliance must be presented to, reviewed, and approved by the CIO, the Director of Information Security, or the equivalent officer(s).

All breaches of information security, actual or suspected, must be reported to, and investigated by the CIO and the Director of Information Security. 

Those who violate security policies, standards, or security procedures are subject to disciplinary action up to and including loss of computer access and appropriate disciplinary actions as determined by St. John’s.

Related Policies, Standards or Regulations