How can auditing be enabled for Spring Boot Actuator?

Question

Options

• AThe @EnableAuditing annotation
• BSetting the property actuator.audit.enabled=true
• CDeclaring a bean of type AuditEventRepository
• DNone of the above.

• A
  14% (3)
• B
  36% (8)
• C
  5% (1)
• D
  45% (10)

Explanation

D is correct because Spring Boot Actuator auditing is automatically enabled by auto-configuration when Spring Security is on the classpath - no explicit opt-in is required. Spring Boot's AuditAutoConfiguration kicks in and registers an InMemoryAuditEventRepository without any developer action, wiring up authentication success/failure events out of the box.

Why the distractors fail:

• A (@EnableAuditing) belongs to Spring Data's JPA entity auditing (tracking @CreatedDate, @LastModifiedBy, etc.) - a completely separate feature with no connection to Actuator.
• B (actuator.audit.enabled=true) is fabricated; this property does not exist in Spring Boot's auto-configuration.
• C is the trickiest: while AuditEventRepository is the central interface for audit storage, you don't need to declare one yourself - Spring Boot auto-registers an InMemoryAuditEventRepository for you. Declaring your own bean overrides the default (e.g., to persist to a database), but it's not required to enable auditing.

Memory tip: When you see "enable X in Spring Boot," think auto-configuration first. Spring Boot's philosophy is convention over configuration - if something works out of the box (like audit events with Spring Security present), the correct answer is often "do nothing," making "None of the above" a trap-busting choice on exams.

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