The difference between an Audit Log and a regular Log (In the context of mod_security)

No - the output listed above just describes the pre-compiled in modules.

The presence of the mod_so.c entry however means that Apache is capable of dynamically loading additional modules.

If you have access to the central configuration you could just go look at this and check to see if there's a line like:

LoadModule security_module modules/mod_security.so

If there is then you have mod_security loaded - NOTE: this could be within an included configuration file as well.

Assuming your configuration is located in /etc/httpd - you could run the following to find if the config is present:

grep -ir security_module /etc/httpd

(Replace /etc/httpd with the central configuration directory).

If you don't have access to the server config you could use an <IfModule mod_security.c> statement within your .htaccess to see if it's enabled:

<IfModule mod_security.c>

... Perform some kind of redirect or re-writing in here ...

</IfModule>

Hope this helps.

For me, this rule was triggering when someone submitted a form with a less-than, greater-than sign with no characters in between, so: '><'

It looks like your form is built in with those pre-entered into the form:

Note that whitespace doesn't fix this.