Review the system documentation to determine if MySQL Server is required to audit when unsuccessful attempts to modify security objects occur. Check if MySQL audit is configured and enabled. The my.cnf file will set the variable audit_file. To further check, execute the following query: SELECT PLUGIN_NAME, PLUGIN_STATUS FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PLUGINS WHERE PLUGIN_NAME LIKE 'audit%'; The status of the audit_log plugin must be "active". If it is not "active", this is a finding. Review audit filters and associated users by running the following queries: SELECT `audit_log_filter`.`NAME`, `audit_log_filter`.`FILTER` FROM `mysql`.`audit_log_filter`; SELECT `audit_log_user`.`USER`, `audit_log_user`.`HOST`, `audit_log_user`.`FILTERNAME` FROM `mysql`.`audit_log_user`; All currently defined audits for the MySQL server instance will be listed. If no audits are returned, this is a finding. To check if the audit filters in place are generating records when unsuccessful attempts to modify security objects occur, run the following as a user without administrator-level privileges: update mysql.global_grants set host='%' where PRIV='XXXX’; Review the audit log by running the Linux command: sudo cat <directory where audit log files are located>/audit.log|egrep global_grants For example if the values returned by - "select @@datadir, @@audit_log_file; " are /usr/local/mysql/data/, audit.log sudo cat /usr/local/mysql/data/audit.log |egrep global_grants The audit data will look similar to the example below and contain a non-zero status value: { "timestamp": "2020-08-19 21:32:27", "id": 2, "class": "general", "event": "status", "connection_id": 9, "account": { "user": "root", "host": "localhost" }, "login": { "user": "root", "os": "", "ip": "::1", "proxy": "" }, "general_data": { "command": "Query", "sql_command": "update", "query": "update mysql.global_grants set host='%' where PRIV='XXXX'", "status": 1421 } } If the audit event is not present, this is a finding.