Audit Logging
Audit Logging is the practice of recording identity events and access decisions in immutable logs. Audit logs track who accessed what, when, and why — creating a historical record of identity decisions that can be reviewed for compliance, incident investigation, and security analysis.
# WHAT TEAMS RUN INTO
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Audit logs are valuable targets for attackers. An attacker who gains access to systems often tries to delete or modify audit logs to cover their tracks. Protecting audit logs requires as much security as protecting the systems they monitor.
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Audit log storage is expensive at scale. A large organization generates millions of audit events per day. Storing all of them indefinitely is costly, and retention policies force deletion of older logs.
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Log analysis is a bottleneck. Audit logs are only useful if they are analyzed. Most organizations store audit logs for compliance but never analyze them until an incident happens and investigators need the history.
# WHY IT MATTERS
Audit logs are the forensic evidence of identity decisions. Without audit logs, there is no way to prove what happened or who did what. Audit logs enable both compliance — proving that controls existed — and incident response — proving what an attacker did. Organizations that maintain strong audit logs can investigate breaches. Organizations without audit logs can only guess.