Why audit logs matter for business security and compliance

Any organization, especially those which handle sensitive information, needs to build and maintain a solid audit trail for its data and systems. By reviewing audit logs, you can ensure errors are noticed and fixed in your system. You also need an accurate audit log to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, ensure business security, and to detect or prevent fraud.

But how do audit logs protect your business? Keep reading to learn the benefits of audit logs and why your organization needs them.

What is an audit log?

An audit log is a record of an event or change to a network or system. Some events which can trigger an audit log include:

• Creation, edits, and removal of users and groups
• Assignment and removal of user roles
• User login and logout
• Direct session termination
• Session expiration
• Successful or failed attempts to change security settings

Reviewing audit logs is necessary for administrators to know when a system is behaving abnormally or if user anomalies are occurring. All of this is essential for ensuring regulatory compliance and investigating security breaches. Some of the information that an audit log tracks can include:

• The event
• Date of the event
• Category of the event
• Detailed description of the event
• User requesting the event
• Role of the user

What is an audit trail?

A series of audit logs create an audit trail. An audit trail is crucial to security since a single audit log can't tell you everything about the overall activities of data. Instead, an audit trail can provide insight into what happened. An audit trail is made up of several event records which can specify when data was accessed, who viewed it, and what action initiated the event. This comprehensive overview makes it easier to determine how to address an issue.

Why audit logs matter

If you're in an industry under compliance regulations like the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) or General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), then audit logs are more than just a security measure– they are also required by law. But there are several other advantages to using audit logs within your organization, even if you are not subject to such regulations.

Provable security

Audit logs provide documentable evidence of how data was accessed, changed, and by whom. Any suspicious or malicious activity is recorded automatically with audit logs. This can be audited by regulators to determine the source of a breach and what actions an attacker took while in the network or system.

Meeting compliance regulations

Depending on your organization's industry or local jurisdiction, you may be required to keep audit logs as part of ensuring compliance with relevant regulatory requirements. Regulations will usually require you to provide provenance for your records and data. They may also stipulate what information you should save like when records were created, who had access to it, and when it is due for disposal.

Let's take a look at the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as an example. The U.S. regulations require healthcare providers and business associates to keep audit logs for 6 years after creation. Audit trails and patient logs need to track who has had access to a patient's medical information, when the data was accessed, who accessed it, and why. 

Fraud prevention

Audit logs make it easy to protect against internal fraud. Since organizations can track how the system is being used by employees, audit logs  can spot red flags of abnormal behavior. It promotes accountability among team members since audit trails can spot when mistakes or errors were made.

Let's take a look at an employee stealing trade secrets as an example. In 2021, a former GE engineer, Jean Patrice Delia, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets from GE. He managed to download over 8,000 documents during his employment, including trade secrets, marketing data, pricing information, and other confidential documents. Many of these documents weren't relevant to his job, but he convinced an IT employee to give him access.

Audit logs could have spotted the red flags of this internal threat. It could have noticed thousands of downloads taking place from one employee, the employee was accessing documents not necessary for his job, and an IT employee had changed permission settings.

Let's take a look at an employee stealing trade secrets as an example. In 2021, a former GE engineer, Jean Patrice Delia, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets from GE. He managed to download over 8,000 documents during his employment, including trade secrets, marketing data, pricing information, and other confidential documents. Many of these documents weren't relevant to his job, but he convinced an IT employee to give him access.

Audit logs could have spotted the red flags of this internal threat. It could have noticed thousands of downloads taking place from one employee, the employee was accessing documents not necessary for his job, and an IT employee had changed permission settings.  

Reconstruction of events

Audit trails can essentially act as a security camera of the network or system it's monitoring. Auditors can look back on what happened and reconstruct events as they played out. This is useful for troubleshooting system errors and determining the extent of a security breach.

Increased efficiency

Audit logs simplify your business operations. Management and specialists can review historical events to find ways to optimize internal systems. This can involve how long it takes to complete a task or operations that affect the performance of a system. 

Properly keeping records also allows for stress-free audits. Many organizations are subject to audits whether external or internal. It can be a stressful experience if audit logs are not comprehensive or easily accessible. A well-kept audit trail can make it faster and less expensive to validate events.

Audit logs best practices

The most basic audit logs track a user's actions, resources accessed, and the date and time of the event. But there are several factors to consider when developing an effective and secure audit trail. 

• Important fields to include: Each audit event should capture the timestamp, status, any error codes, application name, the user who initiated the event, and the device used. Audit logs should have all relevant details to ensure a complete audit trail. If any information is missing, then you risk having an incomplete picture of events.
• Establish data disposition: Your organization should determine how long audit logs should be stored before disposal. While some may consider one year enough, the timeline changes when considering regulatory compliance, business relevance, and legal actions.
• Access control management: Audit logs are files which means they can be corrupted or deleted. Attackers may change audit logs to hide their activities. To prevent this from happening, only a select number of users should have the ability to modify audit log files. 
• Use encryption: Encrypting audit log files can make it more difficult for hackers to read or manipulate them. 
• Consider exporting logs to external systems or an archiving service: Having another copy of audit logs can prevent the total loss of data if the original copy is deleted, corrupted, altered, or stolen.
• Choose the right audit logging tools: Audit logs can collect large amounts of data, and it continues to grow with ongoing inputs and actions. To create a comprehensive audit trail, you need tools to provide a solid framework for easy tracking and storing of audit logs.

How RecordPoint can help provide data trust

Using multiple tools and solutions to manage your data can lead to inconsistencies and errors. A centralized data inventory stores your data in one place and makes it easy to keep track of your data throughout creation, retention, and disposition.

RecordPoint uses Connectors to manage structured and unstructured data sources and create automated data management. With Connectors and federated records management, you can automate and centralize data controls and policies.

With all your information in one place, your organization only has one system to manage, one set of record retention policy rules to apply, and the visibility to purge redundant, obsolete, and trivial (ROT) content across your essential business systems. This added ease can help your company maintain and manage audit trails.