Ensure that the 'Log_min_messages' Flag for a Cloud SQL PostgreSQL Instance is set at minimum to 'Warning'

LOW

Description

Description:

The 'log_min_messages' flag defines the minimum message severity level that is considered as an error statement. Messages for error statements are logged with the SQL statement. Valid values include 'DEBUG5', 'DEBUG4', 'DEBUG3', 'DEBUG2', 'DEBUG1', 'INFO', 'NOTICE', 'WARNING', 'ERROR', 'LOG', 'FATAL', and 'PANIC'.
Each severity level includes the subsequent levels mentioned above. ERROR is considered the best practice setting. Changes should only be made in accordance with the organization's logging policy.

Rationale:

Auditing helps in troubleshooting operational problems and also permits forensic analysis. If 'log_min_messages' is not set to the correct value, messages may not be classified as error messages appropriately. An organization will need to decide their own threshold for logging 'log_min_messages' flag.

This recommendation is applicable to PostgreSQL database instances.

Setting the threshold too low will might result in increased log storage size and length, making it difficult to find actual errors. Setting the threshold to 'Warning' will log messages for the most needed error messages. Higher severity levels may cause errors needed to troubleshoot to not be logged.

Note: To effectively turn off logging failing statements, set this parameter to PANIC.

Remediation

From Google Cloud Console

Go to the Cloud SQL Instances page in the Google Cloud Console by visiting https://console.cloud.google.com/sql/instances
Select the PostgreSQL instance for which you want to enable the database flag.
Click 'Edit'.
Scroll down to the 'Flags' section.
To set a flag that has not been set on the instance before, click 'Add item', choose the flag 'log_min_messages' from the drop-down menu and set appropriate value.
Click 'Save' to save the changes.
Confirm the changes under 'Flags' on the Overview page.

From Google Cloud CLI

Configure the 'log_min_messages' database flag for every Cloud SQL PosgreSQL database instance using the below command.

Note: This command will overwrite all database flags previously set. To keep those and add new ones, include the values for all flags to be set on the instance; any flag not specifically included is set to its default value. For flags that do not take a value, specify the flag name followed by an equals sign ("=").