AUDIT changes - true sense of security

[Warron S French]

Hello all,
                I do work that requires me to configure auditing on my systems.  I am a relative novice to the audit configurations in most operating systems.

I have an issue, I believe, and I am asking for help on how to properly address/assess it.

I have been given guidance in support of auditing on CentOS-6.x systems:

1.       To place various watch (-w) and action (-a) rules into place.

2.       Make certain the configurations are immutable.

Sometimes I have to add more rules, so I do that.   However, I am not certain if the rules are working properly, and I do know that I have broken the auditd init-scripts on my systems a few times, and just commented out the offending audit controls to work around/fix this very type of problem.



What I need to know is, since the configurations have to be immutable ( with the -e 2) how can I properly start the audit service, and without any inkling of a doubt be certain that the rules are in place and are functioning properly?
Also, being a total novice, how can I test/trigger audit log actions on watch and action rules to see that the rules are configured properly?
Finally, is there a tool that will do a sanity check on the audit.rules file?  Or is the only option to attempt to restart the auditd service, and think "It started, it worked!" is acceptable?


I just don't want a false sense of security, I also don't want a nagging sense of paranoia.
Thank you,

Warron French, MBA, SCSA
The Aerospace Corporation
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