Audit Trail

A record of events, changes, or actions that have taken place in a system, which can be used to trace who did what, when, and how. Audit trails (also called logs or audit logs) are crucial for both security and compliance, because they allow you to detect suspicious activity and to investigate or demonstrate what happened after the fact.

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For example, an audit trail on a file server might show that on Tuesday at 3:45 PM, user JohnDoe copied a sensitive file and then deleted it. Or the audit trail on your cloud admin console might record that an admin created a new user account or changed a security setting.

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Maintaining audit trails means configuring your systems and applications to generate logs for important events (like login attempts, data access, configuration changes), and storing those logs securely (often centrally, as in a SIEM).

For a small business, audit trails need not be super elaborate - just enabling basic logging on devices and critical apps can go a long way. The key is that if something goes wrong, you have a breadcrumb trail to follow. It's also an aspect of trust but verify: you trust employees, but you still log critical actions for accountability.

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Audit logs also help in compliance; many standards require retaining logs for a certain period (e.g., PCI DSS requires logging access to cardholder data). BrightShield's features like "Version Control & Audit Trail" for policies, or its integrations feeding into SIEM, emphasize tracking changes and access.

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One practical tip: ensure your audit trail is protected from tampering - for instance, a malicious insider shouldn't be able to erase the logs of their own activities. Many systems write logs to append-only files or external servers for this reason.

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In everyday terms, an audit trail is like the security camera footage of your IT environment - it may be a bit of work to review, but when you need it, you're very glad it's there.