What Is AWS CloudTrail?
Learn what AWS CloudTrail is, how it logs account activity, and why it's essential for auditing, compliance, and troubleshooting in AWS.
What Is AWS CloudTrail?
AWS CloudTrail Definition
AWS CloudTrail tracks activity within an organization's AWS environment, including actions performed by users, identity and access management (IAM) roles, and actions performed on and in AWS services. Accordingly, CloudTrail records this activity as events. CloudTrail events include actions performed using the AWS Management Console, APIs, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), and AWS software development kits. Actions performed using CloudTrail are also tracked.
CloudTrail events fall into two categories. CloudTrail is activated upon creating an AWS account, and it logs events whenever actions are performed in the AWS account. The CloudTrail console provides event history for the past 90 days, which is searchable and downloadable with custom filters. However, event history beyond the past 90 days cannot be viewed or deleted from the CloudTrail console.
What Is a CloudTrail Trail?
A CloudTrail trail allows for the performance of various workflows on CloudTrail events. A trail is configurable to collect or exclude certain events and only delivers events matching its configuration. A trail logs management events and requires additional configuration to include data events.
As the CloudTrail console provides the event history of the past 90 days, a trail can be created to deliver event logs to an AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket. When required, the log data in the S3 buckets can be searched or processed using SQL statements in Amazon Athena.
In general, a trail can be created for all the AWS regions or only one. If the trail applies to all regions, it collects events from all of them, including any new regions that become available after the trail is created. If the trail applies to only one region, it collects events from only that region.
What Is CloudTrail Insights?
CloudTrail Insights is a CloudTrail feature for identifying unusual activity in write API calls. First, it creates a baseline for acceptable activity by analyzing CloudTrail management events and then creates Insights events when abnormal activity is identified. This process is also the reason CloudTrail Insights can take up to 36 hours to report unusual activity after it’s activated.
Unlike CloudTrail events, an Insights event is only created after unusual activity is detected. Examples of such activity include a burst in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instance termination and increased user and role creation in IAM. An Insights event provides information about when the event started, related API activity, and relevant statistics to help you understand the incident and take action.
CloudTrail Core Features and Functionality
CloudTrail is a powerful service, and its true value lies in its core features. When you set it up, you're not turning on a simple logger—you're enabling a sophisticated system that helps you maintain control and visibility in your cloud environment. The best part is how it all comes together to provide a complete picture of your AWS activities and overall user activity.
Let's start with what CloudTrail is built to do: event logging. CloudTrail records management events, which are API operations and actions performed on resources. You can see the specific event name and request parameters for each call, but you can go deeper by enabling data events to log actions, such as an S3 object being accessed. All of these logs are captured as API call logging and other events. You get a searchable event history of the last 90 days right in the console.
For the longer term, you'll set up a trail that delivers a continuous stream of detailed CloudTrail data to an Amazon S3 bucket. This creates an immutable record of your cloud activity, which is crucial for incident response and forensics, along with compliance. The true magic of CloudTrail is its ability to provide multi-region and multi-account support. By setting up a single trail in your management account, you can aggregate logs from every account and region in your organization. This gives you a single pane of glass to view your entire environment.
CloudTrail is a team player, built for integration with AWS services. You can stream your logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs, which lets you store them in a log group for real-time monitoring and analysis. This is a great way to create custom alerts and notifications based on specific events. For more advanced event-driven workflows, you can integrate with Amazon EventBridge or a Lambda function. This allows you to build custom responses to events, such as automatically notifying a team when a critical security group is changed.
Finally, for the heavy hitters, there's CloudTrail Lake. This managed service is for long-term storage and analysis of your events, allowing you to run powerful SQL queries on your data. You can create custom Lake dashboards to visualize trends and spot anomalies. While it's a great tool, it's not a fit for every situation, especially if you're working in a multi-cloud environment where your logging needs go beyond AWS.
CloudTrail Benefits
When an organization deploys more workloads, it can become cumbersome to gain visibility into user and resource activity. Using CloudTrail can provide the following benefits:
Visibility: CloudTrail provides comprehensive visibility into all the activities of end users, such as which user attempted a change, what their role was, the IP address from which the change was initiated, and the resource changed; it also gives complete visibility into both successful and failed API calls to help determine internal policy violations
Compliance: CloudTrail automatically records and stores an organization’s AWS environment activity, simplifying auditing for various compliances, such as HIPAA and PCI DSS; integration with CloudWatch Logs also helps you search log data, identify events violating compliance, and take measures to prevent unacceptable activity
Security: CloudTrail event logs stored in S3 buckets can be ingested into SIEM and log analysis tools for security analysis; events can be analyzed to detect data exfiltration in S3 buckets and trigger automated responses through CloudWatch Events or AWS Lambda
Troubleshooting: CloudTrail events generated for the most recent changes to services or instances can be analyzed to quickly understand if a recent modification caused the occurrence of operational issues; after this preliminary step, a more detailed event analysis can be conducted to identify causes
CloudTrail Setup and Configuration
Setting up CloudTrail is an essential initial step, whether you're working through the console or the AWS CLI. Here’s a brief overview of the configuration process:
- Create a new trail; assign it a name and choose whether to record events for a single account or across all accounts within an AWS Organizations environment
- Designate a storage destination; it's recommended you set up a dedicated S3 bucket for your log files to maintain organization and security, but you can also encrypt your CloudTrail log files using an AWS Key Management Service key for added security
- Pick the event types you wish to capture; with event selectors, you can fine-tune your logging to avoid unnecessary costs—management events are included by default, but you can also activate data events to monitor actions on resources, such as S3 objects
- Consider enabling optional features, such as SNS notifications, for alerts when new log files are delivered or other significant events occur; the service also routinely performs log file integrity validation to confirm your records remain unaltered
After your trail is set up, CloudTrail will automate the logging, giving you the detailed insight you require. This automation can significantly reduce troubleshooting time and assist teams in resolving issues with resources, such as a Virtual Private Cloud.
CloudTrail Best Practices and Recommendations
When you're ready to maximize your use of CloudTrail, keep these best practices in mind:
- Integrate it into your security framework: Utilize CloudTrail to track unauthorized changes and respond swiftly to possible threats, as its comprehensive account activity logs serve as a permanent audit trail for security and compliance; monitoring high error rates can help identify issues or detect malicious actions, and regularly reviewing these logs can help you spot trends or recurring vulnerabilities, enabling proactive improvements to your security posture
- Utilize integrations for instant alerts: Forward events to Amazon CloudWatch to set up alarms for suspicious activities, such as an unusual volume of API calls from unexpected locations; pairing CloudTrail with AWS Config allows you to monitor resource modifications and ensure compliance, and setting up automated notifications enables your team to be immediately informed of critical events, allowing for rapid investigation and response
- Explore CloudTrail Lake for advanced analysis: Take advantage of robust SQL queries to examine your CloudTrail data and uncover unusual behaviors that may otherwise go unnoticed; CloudTrail Lake enables you to perform deep dives into historical activity, analyze patterns over time, and generate detailed reports for audits or security reviews
- Adopt a holistic approach: Apply CloudTrail across multiple use cases, including diagnosing operational issues and conducting forensic investigations; by leveraging CloudTrail's full capabilities, you can gain visibility into all aspects of your AWS environment, improve incident response, and support ongoing compliance efforts
CloudTrail versus CloudWatch
While CloudTrail tracks activity for auditing, analysis, and troubleshooting, CloudWatch monitors AWS resources and applications in real time to provide insights into performance, utilization, and operational health, allowing administrators to optimize resources for efficiency and cost savings.
As the size and number of AWS deployments in an organization increase, it becomes increasingly difficult—and, at the same time, necessary—to gain operational visibility. CloudTrail alleviates this problem by ensuring the organization’s AWS environment is managed as per internal policies and unusual activity is flagged early on.
What Is AWS CloudTrail?
AWS CloudTrail Definition
AWS CloudTrail tracks activity within an organization's AWS environment, including actions performed by users, identity and access management (IAM) roles, and actions performed on and in AWS services. Accordingly, CloudTrail records this activity as events. CloudTrail events include actions performed using the AWS Management Console, APIs, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), and AWS software development kits. Actions performed using CloudTrail are also tracked.
CloudTrail events fall into two categories. CloudTrail is activated upon creating an AWS account, and it logs events whenever actions are performed in the AWS account. The CloudTrail console provides event history for the past 90 days, which is searchable and downloadable with custom filters. However, event history beyond the past 90 days cannot be viewed or deleted from the CloudTrail console.
What Is a CloudTrail Trail?
A CloudTrail trail allows for the performance of various workflows on CloudTrail events. A trail is configurable to collect or exclude certain events and only delivers events matching its configuration. A trail logs management events and requires additional configuration to include data events.
As the CloudTrail console provides the event history of the past 90 days, a trail can be created to deliver event logs to an AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket. When required, the log data in the S3 buckets can be searched or processed using SQL statements in Amazon Athena.
In general, a trail can be created for all the AWS regions or only one. If the trail applies to all regions, it collects events from all of them, including any new regions that become available after the trail is created. If the trail applies to only one region, it collects events from only that region.
What Is CloudTrail Insights?
CloudTrail Insights is a CloudTrail feature for identifying unusual activity in write API calls. First, it creates a baseline for acceptable activity by analyzing CloudTrail management events and then creates Insights events when abnormal activity is identified. This process is also the reason CloudTrail Insights can take up to 36 hours to report unusual activity after it’s activated.
Unlike CloudTrail events, an Insights event is only created after unusual activity is detected. Examples of such activity include a burst in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instance termination and increased user and role creation in IAM. An Insights event provides information about when the event started, related API activity, and relevant statistics to help you understand the incident and take action.
CloudTrail Core Features and Functionality
CloudTrail is a powerful service, and its true value lies in its core features. When you set it up, you're not turning on a simple logger—you're enabling a sophisticated system that helps you maintain control and visibility in your cloud environment. The best part is how it all comes together to provide a complete picture of your AWS activities and overall user activity.
Let's start with what CloudTrail is built to do: event logging. CloudTrail records management events, which are API operations and actions performed on resources. You can see the specific event name and request parameters for each call, but you can go deeper by enabling data events to log actions, such as an S3 object being accessed. All of these logs are captured as API call logging and other events. You get a searchable event history of the last 90 days right in the console.
For the longer term, you'll set up a trail that delivers a continuous stream of detailed CloudTrail data to an Amazon S3 bucket. This creates an immutable record of your cloud activity, which is crucial for incident response and forensics, along with compliance. The true magic of CloudTrail is its ability to provide multi-region and multi-account support. By setting up a single trail in your management account, you can aggregate logs from every account and region in your organization. This gives you a single pane of glass to view your entire environment.
CloudTrail is a team player, built for integration with AWS services. You can stream your logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs, which lets you store them in a log group for real-time monitoring and analysis. This is a great way to create custom alerts and notifications based on specific events. For more advanced event-driven workflows, you can integrate with Amazon EventBridge or a Lambda function. This allows you to build custom responses to events, such as automatically notifying a team when a critical security group is changed.
Finally, for the heavy hitters, there's CloudTrail Lake. This managed service is for long-term storage and analysis of your events, allowing you to run powerful SQL queries on your data. You can create custom Lake dashboards to visualize trends and spot anomalies. While it's a great tool, it's not a fit for every situation, especially if you're working in a multi-cloud environment where your logging needs go beyond AWS.
CloudTrail Benefits
When an organization deploys more workloads, it can become cumbersome to gain visibility into user and resource activity. Using CloudTrail can provide the following benefits:
Visibility: CloudTrail provides comprehensive visibility into all the activities of end users, such as which user attempted a change, what their role was, the IP address from which the change was initiated, and the resource changed; it also gives complete visibility into both successful and failed API calls to help determine internal policy violations
Compliance: CloudTrail automatically records and stores an organization’s AWS environment activity, simplifying auditing for various compliances, such as HIPAA and PCI DSS; integration with CloudWatch Logs also helps you search log data, identify events violating compliance, and take measures to prevent unacceptable activity
Security: CloudTrail event logs stored in S3 buckets can be ingested into SIEM and log analysis tools for security analysis; events can be analyzed to detect data exfiltration in S3 buckets and trigger automated responses through CloudWatch Events or AWS Lambda
Troubleshooting: CloudTrail events generated for the most recent changes to services or instances can be analyzed to quickly understand if a recent modification caused the occurrence of operational issues; after this preliminary step, a more detailed event analysis can be conducted to identify causes
CloudTrail Setup and Configuration
Setting up CloudTrail is an essential initial step, whether you're working through the console or the AWS CLI. Here’s a brief overview of the configuration process:
- Create a new trail; assign it a name and choose whether to record events for a single account or across all accounts within an AWS Organizations environment
- Designate a storage destination; it's recommended you set up a dedicated S3 bucket for your log files to maintain organization and security, but you can also encrypt your CloudTrail log files using an AWS Key Management Service key for added security
- Pick the event types you wish to capture; with event selectors, you can fine-tune your logging to avoid unnecessary costs—management events are included by default, but you can also activate data events to monitor actions on resources, such as S3 objects
- Consider enabling optional features, such as SNS notifications, for alerts when new log files are delivered or other significant events occur; the service also routinely performs log file integrity validation to confirm your records remain unaltered
After your trail is set up, CloudTrail will automate the logging, giving you the detailed insight you require. This automation can significantly reduce troubleshooting time and assist teams in resolving issues with resources, such as a Virtual Private Cloud.
CloudTrail Best Practices and Recommendations
When you're ready to maximize your use of CloudTrail, keep these best practices in mind:
- Integrate it into your security framework: Utilize CloudTrail to track unauthorized changes and respond swiftly to possible threats, as its comprehensive account activity logs serve as a permanent audit trail for security and compliance; monitoring high error rates can help identify issues or detect malicious actions, and regularly reviewing these logs can help you spot trends or recurring vulnerabilities, enabling proactive improvements to your security posture
- Utilize integrations for instant alerts: Forward events to Amazon CloudWatch to set up alarms for suspicious activities, such as an unusual volume of API calls from unexpected locations; pairing CloudTrail with AWS Config allows you to monitor resource modifications and ensure compliance, and setting up automated notifications enables your team to be immediately informed of critical events, allowing for rapid investigation and response
- Explore CloudTrail Lake for advanced analysis: Take advantage of robust SQL queries to examine your CloudTrail data and uncover unusual behaviors that may otherwise go unnoticed; CloudTrail Lake enables you to perform deep dives into historical activity, analyze patterns over time, and generate detailed reports for audits or security reviews
- Adopt a holistic approach: Apply CloudTrail across multiple use cases, including diagnosing operational issues and conducting forensic investigations; by leveraging CloudTrail's full capabilities, you can gain visibility into all aspects of your AWS environment, improve incident response, and support ongoing compliance efforts
CloudTrail versus CloudWatch
While CloudTrail tracks activity for auditing, analysis, and troubleshooting, CloudWatch monitors AWS resources and applications in real time to provide insights into performance, utilization, and operational health, allowing administrators to optimize resources for efficiency and cost savings.
As the size and number of AWS deployments in an organization increase, it becomes increasingly difficult—and, at the same time, necessary—to gain operational visibility. CloudTrail alleviates this problem by ensuring the organization’s AWS environment is managed as per internal policies and unusual activity is flagged early on.
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