The first time a customer sends a security review, the instinct is to treat it as an obstacle. It is more useful to treat it as a specification written by someone who has already lived through the failure.
This piece walks through how we think about it at Paycux, what we have changed our minds about, and where the sharp edges are.
What are audit logs and why should you care?
Consider what are audit logs and why should you care?. Evidence is the deliverable. Not the policy document — the artifact that shows the policy was applied on a specific date to a specific system, produced without anyone editing a spreadsheet.
Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
Use cases of audit logs
Consider use cases of audit logs. Evidence is the deliverable. Not the policy document — the artifact that shows the policy was applied on a specific date to a specific system, produced without anyone editing a spreadsheet.
Separate the record from the data. Audit events are append-only and describe what happened; user records are mutable and describe who someone is. Keeping the two apart makes retention a job over a timestamp and erasure an operation on a row, instead of a negotiation between them.
- Keep audit events append-only and separate from user records
- Describe each control in one sentence before automating it
- Produce evidence automatically, not by hand
- Decide retention per data category, in writing
Building audit logs into your app
That brings us to building audit logs into your app. Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
Evidence is the deliverable. Not the policy document — the artifact that shows the policy was applied on a specific date to a specific system, produced without anyone editing a spreadsheet.
What kind of events to log
That brings us to what kind of events to log. Evidence is the deliverable. Not the policy document — the artifact that shows the policy was applied on a specific date to a specific system, produced without anyone editing a spreadsheet.
Separate the record from the data. Audit events are append-only and describe what happened; user records are mutable and describe who someone is. Keeping the two apart makes retention a job over a timestamp and erasure an operation on a row, instead of a negotiation between them.
Write down the control before you automate it.
What the payload should be
That brings us to what the payload should be. Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
How long should you store audit logs?
That brings us to how long should you store audit logs?. Evidence is the deliverable. Not the policy document — the artifact that shows the policy was applied on a specific date to a specific system, produced without anyone editing a spreadsheet.
Separate the record from the data. Audit events are append-only and describe what happened; user records are mutable and describe who someone is. Keeping the two apart makes retention a job over a timestamp and erasure an operation on a row, instead of a negotiation between them.
What frontend to build
What frontend to build deserves its own treatment. Separate the record from the data. Audit events are append-only and describe what happened; user records are mutable and describe who someone is. Keeping the two apart makes retention a job over a timestamp and erasure an operation on a row, instead of a negotiation between them.
Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
Where this leaves us
The pattern repeats across every system we have looked at: the hard part is not the mechanism, it is keeping the mechanism honest as the surrounding assumptions change.
If you are working through the same problem and want to compare notes, the docs cover the mechanics and the console shows the behaviour on your own data.
Everything here, already built
Sign-in, enterprise SSO, directory provisioning, roles and an audit trail behind one API. Start with the quickstart and have a working sign-in this afternoon.