Most modern software development projects involve multiple developers, operations engineers, QA testers, and managers — and they all require access to the project infrastructure. However, enabling access to modify infrastructure leads to a higher risk of security breaches and legal disputes. Because of this, organizations rely on audit logs to address possible security concerns by recording precise actions in, and changes to, their infrastructure.
In this article, we will define audit logs and explore their use cases in infrastructure. We’ll look specifically at cloud and database activity. We’ll also consider legal compliance, and common challenges with data volumes, log retention periods, and correlations across different systems that require careful evaluation.
What are audit logs?
Audit logs are a collection of records of internal activity relating to an information system. To be useful, these records must contain the following information: