Auditing

Auditing is the process of recording and checking events to detect whether any unexpected or unauthorized activity has taken place, or whether any attempt has been made to perform such activity.

[MQ 10.0.0 Jun 2026]Higher levels of auditing can even go as far as auditing successful operations.

Auditing in IBM® MQ is performed by configuring instrumentation event messages, specifically queue manager events. Alternatively, Application activity trace can be utilized to produce a report of activity on a queue manager cause by connected applications.

Auditing in IBM MQ

IBM MQ can issue event messages to record that activity has taken place.

Here are some examples of auditing in an IBM MQ environment:
  • An application attempts to open a queue that it is not authorized to open. An instrumentation event message is issued. By inspecting the event message, you discover that this attempt occurred and can decide what action is necessary.
  • An application attempts to open a channel, but the attempt fails because the TLS connection is not allowed. An instrumentation event message is issued. By inspecting the event message, you discover that this attempt occurred and can decide what action is necessary.
  • [MQ 10.0.0 Jun 2026]Normal operations performed by applications such as connecting, opening a queue, subscribing to a topic or running a command.