What is database auditing, and why is it important? Provide an example of a third-party package which adds auditing to SQL Server?
Database auditing is a way to determine whether or not suspicious activity is occurring on the database and if the database is under attack. This can be set up automatically so that administrators are automatically notified if there is an attack. Database auditing is specific enough that it can be determined whether or not there is an actual attack on the database, or if it is actually a configuration problem because a certain application has the password stored and that password has been changed. The application trying to access the database can be determined and reconfigured to access the database again. Auditing is important because like I said, attacks and suspicious activity can be caught and acted upon, and work stoppages and bad application configurations can be determined through the bad password attempts that are flagged. An example of a third party package would be Lumigent Audit DB. This product monitors the network 3 different ways, through the database logs, network capture, and native auditing, and supports IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and Sybase ASE.