What is an Audit Trail?

Human error is the cause of 88% of data breaches according to a recent report. This highlights the importance of tracking and monitoring data access and modifications in granular detail. In this blog, we will go over audit trails and how they can be used to safeguard sensitive data and demonstrate compliance.

What is an Audit Trail?

The term “audit trail” describes the thorough record of all actions or activities pertaining to data flows, transactions, or reports. This would contain information that is created, changed, moved, or removed at any time. Digital records can now be tracked via audit trails if the appropriate software platform is available, replacing the laborious paper audit trails of the past.
Large firms may have audit logs that contain thousands of activities, whereas smaller companies may just have an audit trail that records a few hundred operations. In either case, it is necessary to have a dedicated audit tracking and data management platform in place.

The Complete Guide to Data Protection From CISOs to SecOps teams, find out how data protection is evolving and what you need to do to keep up. Download Ebook

Why Do I Need an Audit Trail?

For a business to remain efficient, secure, and accountable, audit trails are essential. They provide a reliable way to find the actions and ensure that every action is documented and verified. Let’s look at the following justifications for the significance of data audit trails:

1. Accountability: An audit trail provides a clear record of what happened and who was involved. This transparency is necessary to comprehend the subtleties of many events. By proving who did what and when, audit trails help teams develop a culture of trust and accountability. This level of accountability not only reduces internal disagreements but also helps identify opportunities for better teamwork.
2. Fraud Detection and Investigation: When looking for evidence and stopping fraud, the audit trail becomes an essential piece of information. It is possible to identify any unauthorized actions’ perpetrators and identify odd trends by closely reviewing the audit trail. Audit trails let firms identify anomalous activity much more quickly and act before minor concerns become major ones. Whether it’s a system error or illegal access, prompt detection reduces risks and avoids expensive interruptions.
3. Ensuring Compliance: An audit trail is required by law for certain businesses. A variety of compliances, including HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and ISO27001, require audit trails in one way or another. It guarantees that the laws and rules that control your industry are followed by your actions. You may firmly show that you are committed to industry norms and financial standards by providing an audit trail.
4. Process Improvement: It appears that the audit trail is a comprehensive collection of information for process improvement. This would make it easier to determine what is effective and what requires development. The audit can be analysed to identify bottlenecks and identify areas that would improve operational efficiency. An audit trail acts as your mentor, guardian, and source of information, making sure that your company runs efficiently, morally, and legally.
5. Trace Errors: Finding any data breaches, whether internal or external, is another benefit of the audit trail. Additionally, it helps in keeping an eye out for any malevolent or suspicious activity. A strong audit trail will enable you to determine precisely who accessed the data, what modifications they made, and when, in the event of a mismatch. This will provide you with all the proof you require for an investigation or to find the guilty parties. It helps you identify and fix issues. Action can be taken to correct errors and prevent them from occurring again armed with the knowledge obtained from the audit trail.
6. Event Analysis: Following an incident, audit trails are utilized to recreate what happened. To determine the time, location, and cause of the disruption to regular operations, these audit trials should be used. An audit trail will provide step-by-step guidance for any application process. This allows for the understanding of the reason behind failures. Using version history, it can also assist in fixing technical issues.

If you like this, you’ll love thisTop 10 Data Privacy Best Practices for a Secure Organization

The sensitive information in the company can be used for a variety of malevolent purposes. Data security, governance, and access are all aided by the audit trails. Since there have been more data breaches in recent years, audit trails have become a crucial component of the system.
An audit trail keeps track of every time data is altered, allowing you to determine who tampered with the systems, when it happened, and how it happened. You can enhance your company’s data access and security procedures by doing this.

As the name implies, auditing is usually hectic, difficult, and perplexing. The audit trails are difficult to implement and maintain. A lot of preparation and execution are required for this operation, from guaranteeing data correctness to balancing storage demands. The few challenges with having a data audit trail are listed below.

1. Outdated Systems: Every organization uses products like Word, Excel, Google Drive, and others that are somewhat out of date. In addition to being prone to errors, these systems require a lot of manual labor. Many manual errors are made when storing data in these systems, which eventually results in inaccurate data.
2. Multiple Audits: Due to a lack of resources, complicated rules, and policy creation, many firms find it difficult to maintain and carry out several audits with various needs. This appears to be a problem because completing the audit trail takes a lot of time and work.
3. Limited Resources: In many cases, such as storing audits from various platforms and according to specific requirements, it takes time to configure, setup, and maintain over time. Many organizations lack the bandwidth and resources required to handle all of the auditing tasks. The audit trail’s limited resources have led to a number of issues, such as scheduling issues and mismanagement. Another issue that appears to be a challenge in maintaining the audit trail is the location of the data storage.
4. Integration Issues: Integrating audit trails into the antiquated system is one of the most difficult tasks. Finding potential roadblocks and coming up with ways to get around them would be the challenge at hand. This integration will even cover the older systems, where all data would be monitored and safeguarded. Appropriate planning would also be done to determine how to create techniques for seamless interaction with existing systems in order to reduce interruptions and optimize the effectiveness of data audit trail installation.

After outlining the difficulties, let’s concentrate on the best ways to organize and execute audit trails within the organization.

1. Policies and Procedures: To strengthen the security posture and protect privacy, one strategy is to create policies and procedures. The processes would outline how to apply the controls and regulations according to the person. Regular updates to the policies and procedures should incorporate audit results, security incidents, and modifications to the relevant rules, laws, and standards. According to the requirements of the organization, even general security policies and procedures can be developed.
2. Activity Monitoring: One of the most crucial methods for planning and carrying out audit trails is activity monitoring. Data privacy or system security are impacted by system transactions or activity changes. Proper documentation of these operations is necessary. Changes in privacy attribution, privileged account usage, and password upgrades are a few examples. It is important to keep auditing and system requirements in balance. determining which events need to be recorded in order to support and fulfill the auditing requirements.
3. Audit records: An audit record detailing the event’s type, sequence, date, source, and results must be kept. Due to the fact that audit records contain sensitive information, privacy risk is an important consideration when maintaining them. Conduct regular audits to examine the data from the audit trail. It is best to use a few tools, such as real-time monitoring. This would strengthen the security posture overall and enable quick reaction to any routine activity.
4. Analyse and Review: Regular evaluation, analysis, and reporting of the audit’s findings are required for information security and logging scanning. The frequency, scope, and depth of audit examination, analysis, and reporting should be determined in accordance with the needs of the business and any applicable laws. Account usage, remote access, physical access, and system configurations should be the primary subjects of this investigation and evaluation. The effectiveness of the audit trail’s implementation must be investigated and evaluated. Finding the areas that need improvement and implementing the solutions are essential. Verify that the audit trail methods are adaptable enough to take into account industry developments and hazards.
5. Training and Educating Employees: Every employee should be encouraged to embrace their part in maintaining the integrity of the audit trail by cultivating a culture of security awareness. The significance of the audit trail and their part in preserving the data integrity should be explained to the employees. Another strategy to enhance the culture is to provide training courses that enable team members to comprehend and follow audit trail regulations.

Audit trails are crucial for preserving sensitive data’s integrity and security. Lepide provides tools like unified audit logs that track your whole data ecosystem, dynamic, scalable policies that change with your company, and completely automated reporting that lets your compliance teams get all the data they require. Lepide Data Security Platform finds over-exposed data and reduces the attack surface.
Utilizing the Lepide is a simpler way to monitor audit trails. Numerous pre-made reports enable IT teams to easily track Active Directory activity and monitor changes.

Want to see how Lepide can help you simplify and level up your auditing? Schedule a demo with one of our experts today!