By Sujay Maheshwari, Co-founder and CEO, Cloudanix —

All You Need To Know About AWS CloudTrail

AWS CloudTrail is a service that helps to simplify the compliance audits by automatically recording and storing event logs for actions that are made within a user AWS account.

AWS CloudTrail integrated with Amazon CloudWatch Logs to offer a convenient way to search through log data, expedite responses to auditor requests, accelerate incident investigations, and identify out of compliance events.

AWS CloudTrail also provides visibility into user and resource activity by capturing and recording the API calls and AWS Management console actions. The event history feature offers an excellent platform to search, view, and download AWS’s recent account activity.

The event history feature allows the gaining of visibility into the AWS account resources’ changes to enable the strengthening of security processes and simplifying operational issue resolution. The multi-region configuration feature allows the proper configuration of AWS CloudTrail to deliver the log files from the multiple regions to a single Amazon S3 bucket for a single user account.

The log file integrity validation feature offers an excellent platform to validate the integrity of AWS CloudTrail log files stored in the S3 Bucket and detect whether the log files were unchanged, deleted, or modified since CloudTrail delivers them to the Amazon S3 bucket.

The log file encryption feature facilitates the encrypting of all log files delivered to a specified Amazon S3 bucket using the S3 server-side encryption. The data events feature insights into the resource operations performed on or within the resource itself.

The management of events features also provides a useful platform for insights into the operations management performed on resources in the Amazon Web Service account.

Some of the Key Benefits of Amazon Web Service CloudTrail

Let’s have a quick look at why CloudTrail could be the perfect Swiss Army Knife to effectively and efficiently analyze events that occur in your platform and environment:

  • Take Charge of proper Security Visibility: By using CloudTrail, you will discover and analyze each activity that occurs within your environment. CloudTrail enables the user to discover and troubleshoot operational and security issues and capture a detailed history of changes at regular intervals.
  • Security Automation: CloudTrail helps to automate responses to security threats faster and enables you to build robust mechanisms to mitigate further future threats.
  • Defect Data Exfiltration: You can take advantage of the AWS CloudTrail to record AWS S3 object-level API events to detect data exfiltration and perform some of the usage analysis of AWS S3 objects.
  • Easy Governance, Compliance, and Monitoring: By integrating CloudTrail with any other AWS service such as Amazon S3 bucket and Amazon CloudWatch, you can alert and expedite your response to any non-compliance event.

How does Amazon Web Service CloudTrail Work?

AWS account activity takes place, which helps the user with the necessary and straightforward information about the AWS CloudTrail:

  • CloudTrail helps to capture and record the activity as a CloudTrail event.
  • The user can set up the CloudTrail and define an Amazon S3 bucket for storage.
  • The user can view and download the activity of CloudTrail with the help of a CloudTrail history.
  • The log of AWS CloudTrail is delivered to the S3 Bucket, and it gets delivered to the CloudWatch events and logs.

Some of the Best Practices and Tips for AWS CloudTrail

  • Logging of CloudTrail: Log all accounts into a single Amazon S3 platform bucket, with the implementation being an organization-wide trail.
  • Object Locking: For a highly compliant environment, enable S3 object locking on your S3 bucket to ensure data cannot be deleted.
  • S3 Access Logging: It enables S3 Access Logging and Tracking for CloudTrail to identify exfiltration.
  • KMS Encryption: Ensure that the log files at rest are encrypted with a customer-managed KMS key to safeguarding against unwarranted access.

AWS CloudTrail Example

				
					{
  "eventVersion": "1.05",
  "userIdentity": {
    "type": "AWSService",
    "invokedBy": "ec2.amazonaws.com"
  },
  "eventTime": "2019-12-10T01:44:26Z",
  "eventSource": "sts.amazonaws.com",
  "eventName": "AssumeRole",
  "awsRegion": "us-east-1",
  "sourceIPAddress": "ec2.amazonaws.com",
  "userAgent": "ec2.amazonaws.com",
  "requestParameters": {
    "roleSessionName": "i-00888ddddd3333322",
    "roleArn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/S3SecurityDataAssumeRole"
  },
  "responseElements": {
    "credentials": {
      "sessionToken": "IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEIL//==",
      "accessKeyId": "AAAASSSRRRRRZZZZZZCC",
      "expiration": "Dec 10, 2019 7:46:42 AM"
}
  },
  "requestID": "09a32e7f-f51d-4f84-8f53-38e1cd773e3f",
  "eventID": "f12888b4-4208-4ead-aa6a-1a21ffb24c15",
  "resources": [{
   "ARN": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/S3SecurityDataAssumeRole",
   "accountId": "123456789012",
   "type": "AWS::IAM::Role"
    }
  ],
  "eventType": "AwsApiCall",
  "recipientAccountId": "123456789012",
  "sharedEventID": "0aa168dc-6402-4bbf-9bc6-4d2bf58f106c"
}
				
			
 

AWS CloudTrail Uses

  • Security Check

 The user can take charge of security validation and analysis. With CloudTrail events and log management, patterns, and analytics solutions, they can notice user behavior.

  • Data Exfiltration

With the help of an object-level API event recorded in CloudTrail, the user can watch the data exfiltration by collecting activity data on the S3 objects.

  • Compliance AID

AWS CloudTrail makes it easier to confirm governance, compliance with the internal policies, and regulative standards by offering a history of activity in the account. For more additional information, transfer the AWS governance whitepaper.

  • Troubleshooting the Operational Issue 

The AWS user can troubleshoot operational problems by supporting the AWS API decision history created by the CloudTrail. Let’s say, for instance; the user will be able to quickly determine the significant and recent changes that have been created to resources in the atmosphere as well as modification, creation, and deletion of AWS resources.

Bottom Line

Hence, here we get to know the CloudTrail is enabled on all AWS accounts and records the user account activity as per the user account creation. The user will then read and transfer the last ninety days of the user account activity to modify, produce, and delete operations of supported services.

 

How can Cloudanix help?

Cloudanix is your Ops Dashboard, which cuts across all these tools and several others and gives you a single swiss-knife for your Ops needs. We also provide a recipe for monitoring and auditing your CloudTrail to ensure security, availability and reliability. Use the free trial and check it out for yourself.


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