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Configure Security Features

Set Up Database Auditing

Note

This feature is not available for any of the following deployments:

  • M0 Free clusters

  • Flex clusters

  • Serverless instances (deprecated)

  • M2/M5 Shared clusters (deprecated)

To learn more, see Limits.

Database auditing lets administrators track system activity for deployments with multiple users. Atlas administrators can select the actions, database users, Atlas roles, and LDAP groups that they want to audit. Atlas supports auditing most of the documented system event actions, with the following limitation:

  • The Atlas audit logs don't track user creation or modification events because Atlas performs these operations directly in the admin database.

Important

Performing a Full Database Audit

Due to this limitation, you must use a combination of audit logs, the mongodb.log, and the Project Activity Feed to perform a full audit.

The authCheck event action logs authorization attempts by users trying to read from and write to databases in the clusters in your project. Atlas audits the following specific commands:

authCheck Reads
authCheck Writes

aggregate

aggregate

mapReduce

mapReduce

distinct

delete

count

findAndModify

geoNear

insert

geoSearch

update

group

resetError

find

getLastError

getMore

getPrevError

Atlas implements the authCheck event action as the following four separate actions:

Event Action
Description

authChecksReadFailures

authCheck event action for all failed reads with the auditAuthorizationSuccess parameter set to false. This event action is the default for read-related event actions.

authChecksReadAll

authCheck event action for all reads, both sucesses and failures. This event action is the same as authChecksReadFailures, but with the auditAuthorizationSuccess parameter set to true.

WARNING: If you enable auditAuthorizationSuccess, you might severely impact cluster performance. Enable this option with caution.

authChecksWriteFailures

authCheck event action for all failed writes with the auditAuthorizationSuccess parameter set to false. This event action is the default for write-related event actions.

authChecksWriteAll

authCheck event action for all writes, both successes and failures. This event action is the same as authChecksWriteFailures, but with the auditAuthorizationSuccess parameter set to true.

WARNING: If you enable auditAuthorizationSuccess, you might severely impact cluster performance. Enable this option with caution.

To learn about how MongoDB writes audit events to disk, see Audit Guarantee in the MongoDB Manual.

Required Access

To configure audit logs, you must have Project Owner access to the project that you want to update or Organization Owner access to the organization that contains the project that you want to update.

To learn about recommendations for auditing and logging, including the events that we recommend auditing, see Recommendations for Atlas Auditing and Logging in the Atlas Architecture Center.

Procedure

Note

To learn about best practices for auditing the actions of temporary database users, see Audit Temporary Database Users.

Use the following procedure to set up database auditing:

1

In Atlas, go to the Advanced page for your project.

Warning

Navigation Improvements In Progress

We're currently rolling out a new and improved navigation experience. If the following steps don't match your view in the Atlas UI, see the preview documentation.

  1. If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it's not already displayed, select your project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. In the sidebar, click Advanced under the Security heading.

    The Advanced page displays.

2

Toggle the button next to Database Auditing to On.

3

Confirm that you want to audit authentication failures.

By default, Atlas logs the failed authentication attempts of both known and unknown users in the audit log of the primary node.

4

Select the database users, Atlas roles, and LDAP groups whose actions you want to audit in Select users and roles.

Alternatively, click Use Custom JSON Filter to manually enter an audit filter as a JSON string. For more information on configuring custom audit filters in Atlas, see Configure a Custom Auditing Filter.

5

Select the event actions that you want to audit in Select actions to audit.

Note

Deselecting the authenticate action prevents Atlas from auditing authentication failures.

Note

When selecting the authorization success granularity of auditing for the authCheck event action, Atlas does not support different selections for reads and writes. For example, you may not select Successes and Failures for authCheck Reads and Failures for authCheck Writes. If you select both authCheck Reads and authCheck Writes, Atlas automatically applies your selected granularity to both.

6

Click Save.

To retrieve the audit logs in Atlas, see MongoDB Logs. To retrieve the audit logs using the API, see Logs.

Configure a Custom Auditing Filter

Note

This feature is not available for any of the following deployments:

  • M0 Free clusters

  • Flex clusters

  • Serverless instances (deprecated)

  • M2/M5 Shared clusters (deprecated)

To learn more, see Limits.

Atlas supports specifying a JSON-formatted audit filter for customizing MongoDB Auditing.

Custom audit filters let users forgo the managed Atlas UI auditing filter builder in favor of hand-tailored granular control of event auditing. Atlas checks only that the custom filter uses valid JSON syntax, and doesn't validate or test the filter's functionality.

The audit filter document must resolve to a query that matches one or more fields in the audit event message. The filter document can use combinations of query operators and equality conditions to match the desired audit messages.

To view example auditing filters, see Example Auditing Filters. To learn more about configuring MongoDB auditing filters, see Configure Audit Filter.

Important

Atlas uses a rolling upgrade strategy for enabling or updating audit configuration settings across all clusters in the Atlas project. Rolling upgrades require at least one election per replica set.

To learn more about testing application resilience to replica set elections, see Test Primary Failover. To learn more about how Atlas provides high availability, see Atlas High Availability.

Procedure

1

In Atlas, go to the Advanced page for your project.

Warning

Navigation Improvements In Progress

We're currently rolling out a new and improved navigation experience. If the following steps don't match your view in the Atlas UI, see the preview documentation.

  1. If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it's not already displayed, select your project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. In the sidebar, click Advanced under the Security heading.

    The Advanced page displays.

2

Toggle the button next to Database Auditing to On.

3

Select Use Custom JSON Filter.

4

Enter your audit filter into the text box.

5

Toggle Audit authorization successes.

Warning

Enabling Audit authorization successes can severely impact cluster performance. Enable this option with caution.

For audit filters specifying the authCheck action type, the auditing system logs only authorization failures for any specified param.command by default. Enabling Audit authorization successes directs the auditing system to also log authorization successes. If you don't enable auditAuthorizationSuccess, your audit system can't log successful CRUD operations specified in the action type. To learn more, see auditAuthorizationSuccess.

6

Click Save.

Edit a Custom Auditing Filter

You can edit your filter at any time:

1

In Atlas, go to the Advanced page for your project.

Warning

Navigation Improvements In Progress

We're currently rolling out a new and improved navigation experience. If the following steps don't match your view in the Atlas UI, see the preview documentation.

  1. If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it's not already displayed, select your project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. In the sidebar, click Advanced under the Security heading.

    The Advanced page displays.

2

Edit the filter.

  1. Under Database Auditing Configure Your Auditing Filter, click Use Custom JSON Filter.

  2. Make the required changes.

  3. Click Save.

View Your Custom Auditing Filter

To return the auditing configuration for the specified project using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas auditing describe [options]

To learn more about the command syntax and parameters, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas auditing describe.

To view your custom auditing filter in the Atlas UI:

1

In Atlas, go to the Advanced page for your project.

Warning

Navigation Improvements In Progress

We're currently rolling out a new and improved navigation experience. If the following steps don't match your view in the Atlas UI, see the preview documentation.

  1. If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it's not already displayed, select your project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. In the sidebar, click Advanced under the Security heading.

    The Advanced page displays.

2

View your filter.

Your custom auditing filter displays under Database Auditing.

Example Auditing Filters

Use the following example auditing filters for guidance in constructing your own filters.

Important

These examples are not intended for use in production environments, nor are they a replacement for familiarity with the MongoDB Auditing Documentation.

Audit all authentication events for known users

{
  "atype": "authenticate"
}

Audit all authentication events for known users and authentication failures for unknown users

{
  "$or": [
    {
      "users": []
    },
    {
      "atype": "authenticate"
    }
  ]
}

Note

The authenticate action is required to log authentication failures from known and unknown users.

Audit authentication events for the "myClusterAdministrator" user

{
  "atype": "authenticate",
  "param": {
    "user": "myClusterAdministrator",
    "db": "admin",
    "mechanism": "SCRAM-SHA-256"
  }
}

Audit unauthorized attempts at executing the selected commands

{
  "atype": "authCheck",
  "param.command": {
    "$in": [
      "insert",
      "update",
      "delete"
    ]
  }
}

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