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Using CA Auditor to Detect File Changes

The File Freezer option creates a “digital signature” for each file and stores the result in its database. This is called freezing the file. The file’s digital signature is stored with other information about the file in the freezer database. Later, you can refreeze the file, and CA Auditor tells you if the file changed in the interim by comparing the new data it collects to the data in the freezer database.

You can check individual files (including VSAM files), subsystems, members of a library, or all library members (including Endevor, CA Librarian, and CA Panvalet libraries). The number of files you can freeze is limited only by the size of DBASE1, the CA Auditor database. Each frozen file requires only 160 characters in the freezer database. This requires much less space than you would need if you kept a copy of the whole file. If at any time you decide that you no longer need to monitor changes to a file, you can delete the entry for that file from the database.

The method used to freeze files has a 99.998 percent chance of detecting a change to the file. This percentage is even higher for files that contain only alphanumeric characters and punctuation, such as source programs.