DSS/HIPPA/SOX Unalterable Audit Logs?

analogrithems writes "Recently I was asked by one of the suits in my company to come up with a method to comply with the new PCI DSS policy that requires companies to have write once, read many logs. In short the requirement is for a secure method to make sure that once a log is written it can never be deleted or changed. So far I've only been able to find commercial and hardware-based solutions. I would prefer to use an open source solution. I know this policy is already part of HIPPA and soon to be part of SOX. It seems like there ought to be a way to do this with cryptography and checksums to ensure authenticity. Has anyone seen or developed such a solution? Or how have you made compliance?"

Comments

Write-Only Memory

[jmv]

That's all you need

Re:Go with commercial hardware solution

[feepness]

unless you want to spend the next 6 months explaining to your auditors how your homegrown solution works and then the next 6 months building something new that your auditors do understand (or worse, like losing your job). I dunno, I can lose my job WAY faster than 6 months.

Re:Write them to a DVD jukebox

[//rhi]

I always thought that WORM stood for "Write Once, Read Maybe"
//rhi - Enjoy the American Dream - You have to be asleep to believe it.

Re:Question... What's to stop

[More_Cowbell]

/kill people who saw this form (difficult) or reverse a cryptographic hash (even more difficult).

So you find it easier to kill people than to run computer programs... Remind me not to get on your shit list. :p

Re:Syslog

[kars]

That's easy; feed the paper coming out of the printer through some sort of OCR machine.