Audit Logs

Audit Logs Definition

In the digital world, every change to your application, no matter how small or insignificant it may look like is stored and documented as an audit log or audit trail. The traditional definition of Audit logs says that the audit trail includes a huge specter of changes, no matter how small or big they are. Additionally, the number of sectors that audit logs cover is broad too.  From financial, scientific, communication to health care or any sector at all. In other words, Audit Logs’ presence is existing across so many areas of human activities. 

Today we will only focus on a small fraction of it- Audit logs in applications.

You may think that audit logs, when it comes to apps, are optional, that you don’t need to store so much data. That is the wrong approach on so many levels. 

Compelling Reasons to use Audit Logs

First of all, the usefulness of audit logs is manifold. 

It gives you and your development team precious insight on what went wrong with the application. With the data contained in those logs, you could potentially truck down DDoS attack, error source in code, or any on-going issues that may occur in your application. In some way, logs can be compared with fingerprints on a crime scene. They serve as evidence, a signpost for what went horribly wrong. System audit logs can show security analysis on what specific part of the app was deleted, changed, or attacked, and when did that take place. By having this information you can act accordingly, on time, so that you can mitigate the consequences of those unfortunate events and boost not only the performance of your app but also your cybersecurity. And that’s why the audit trail for a web application is so crucial and important. 

So information given by logs could save your company’s image in the eyes of not only current but potential customers as well. That alone should be enough reason to believe that the logs are not optional but necessary part of your company’s security plan.

From a legal point of view audit logs perhaps play an even bigger role. It is required to keep any changes and by not doing so you could face serious charges and fines. So that is the second big reason to use audit logs.

Last but not least, the third reason to utilize Audit Logs lies in its simplicity because compared to alternatives Logs are far easier to read data from it. 

Why you should use Audit Logs:

• Security
• Accountability
• Compliance

How to read and understand Audit Logs

In the previous segment, we mentioned the simplicity of Audit logs. However, to read logs properly you need an experienced person or a sophisticated Software as a service (SaaS) log monitoring. Here is where Frontegg’s advanced audit log management can help you out. Frontegg’s Audit logs in SaaS provide you with an extensive and simple-to-read interface that contains pieces of information about “what”, “when” and “who” took certain actions which led to changes in the application.

Conclusion

Ultimately, to put it simply, by using these SaaS log management you can save yourself and the team around you a lot of time and energy that can be used on other equally important tasks.