A Relational Approach to Monitoring Controls

The integration and coupling that result from networking, database systems, and real-time applications are serving to increase concern about security and control in modem computing environments. The establishment and effective monitoring of controls in such settings is essential to guarantee data integrity and to prevent undesired intrusion. It is proposed that the monitoring of system controls is essentially an information-processing activity and that the relational model is a useful formalization of information gathered from central monitoring. Moreover, we posit that the universal data view facilitates auditor analysis without imposing the requirement that he or she have explicit knowledge of the structure of the relational database of monitoring information.