Audit Log Management in MongoDB

In the past few years, web-based applications and their data management needs have changed dramatically. Relational databases are often being replaced by other viable alternatives, such as NoSQL databases, for reasons of scalability and heterogeneity. MongoDB, a NoSQL database, is an agile database built for scalability, performance and high availability. It can be deployed in single server environment and also on complex multi-site architectures. MongoDB provides high performance for read and write operations by leveraging in-memory computing. Although researchers have motivated the need for MongoDB, not much appears in the area of log management. Efficient log management techniques are needed for various reasons including security, accountability, and improving the performance of the system. Towards this end, we analyze the different logging methods offered by MongoDB and compare them to the NIST standard. Our analysis indicates that profiling and mongosniff are useful for log management and we present a simple model that combines the two techniques.