Audit trails maintain a record of system activity both by LAN system and application processes and by user activity of systems and applications. In conjunction with appropriate tools and procedures, audit trails can assist in detecting security violations, performance problems, and flaws in applications. This bulletin focuses on audit trails as a technical control and discusses the benefits and objectives of audit trails, the types of audit trails, and some common implementation issues.
An audit trail is a series of records of computer events, about an operating system, an application, or user activities. A computer system may have several audit trails, each devoted to a particular type of activity. Auditing is a review and analysis of management, operational, and technical controls. The auditor can obtain valuable information about activity on a computer system from the audit trail. Audit trails improve the auditability of the computer system.
Audit trails may be used as either a support for regular system operations or a kind of insurance policy or as both of these. As insurance, audit trails are maintained but are not used unless needed, such as after a system outage. As a support for operations, audit trails are used to help system administrators ensure that the system or resources have not been harmed by hackers, insiders, or technical problems.
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