Auditing and monitoring are critical components of maintaining a secure and efficient BigQuery environment. This section will cover the tools and techniques available in BigQuery for auditing and monitoring your data and queries. By the end of this module, you will understand how to track access and changes to your data, monitor query performance, and ensure compliance with organizational policies.

1. Auditing: The process of recording and analyzing access and changes to data and resources.
2. Monitoring: The continuous observation of system performance and resource usage to ensure optimal operation.

BigQuery integrates with Google Cloud's audit logging to provide detailed logs of activities. There are three types of audit logs:

• Admin Activity Logs: Record administrative actions such as creating or deleting datasets.
• Data Access Logs: Record read and write operations on data.
• System Event Logs: Record system events like VM migrations.

Example: Viewing Audit Logs

To view audit logs in the Google Cloud Console:

1. Navigate to the Logging section.
2. Select Logs Explorer.
3. Use the following query to filter BigQuery logs:

Google Cloud's Stackdriver provides monitoring capabilities for BigQuery. It allows you to set up dashboards, alerts, and custom metrics.

Example: Setting Up a Monitoring Dashboard

1. Go to the Monitoring section in the Google Cloud Console.
2. Select Dashboards and click Create Dashboard.
3. Add widgets to monitor metrics such as query execution time, slot utilization, and bytes processed.

BigQuery provides detailed information about query execution, which can be accessed through the BigQuery UI or via SQL queries.

Example: Querying Job Metadata

You can query the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.JOBS view to get details about query jobs:

You can set up alerts in Stackdriver to notify you of specific conditions, such as high query latency or excessive resource usage.

Example: Creating an Alert Policy

1. In the Monitoring section, select Alerting.
2. Click Create Policy.
3. Define the conditions for the alert, such as high CPU usage or long-running queries.
4. Set up notification channels (email, SMS, etc.).

1. Navigate to the Logging section in the Google Cloud Console.
2. Use the Logs Explorer to filter and view BigQuery audit logs.
3. Identify a recent data access log and note the details such as user, timestamp, and action.

1. Go to the Monitoring section and create a new dashboard.
2. Add widgets to monitor the following metrics:
   • Query execution time
   • Slot utilization
   • Bytes processed
3. Save the dashboard and observe the metrics over time.

1. In the Monitoring section, create a new alert policy.
2. Define a condition to trigger the alert, such as query execution time exceeding a threshold.
3. Set up a notification channel to receive alerts.

• Ignoring Audit Logs: Regularly review audit logs to detect unauthorized access or unusual activity.
• Overlooking Alerts: Set up alerts for critical metrics to proactively address issues.
• Not Using Dashboards: Utilize monitoring dashboards to get a real-time view of your BigQuery environment.

Auditing and monitoring are essential for maintaining the security and performance of your BigQuery environment. By leveraging Google Cloud's audit logging and Stackdriver monitoring, you can ensure that your data is secure, your queries are efficient, and your system is compliant with organizational policies. In the next section, we will explore compliance and best practices to further enhance your BigQuery setup.