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Cloud audit logging: what to log, retention, and alerting use cases (engineer-friendly, step-by-step)

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 If you’re setting up cloud audit logging (AWS/Azure/GCP) and feel overwhelmed by what to log, how long to retain it, and when to alert, this engineer-friendly guide breaks it down step-by-step with practical use cases—so you can improve security and troubleshooting without drowning in noisy logs.

Cloud Audit Logging — what actually matters:

✅ What to log (must-have)

  • IAM/auth changes, privileged actions, policy edits

  • Network/security changes (SG/NACL/firewall, public exposure)

  • Data access events (storage reads, DB admin actions)

  • Kubernetes + workload changes (deployments, secrets, config)

✅ Retention (simple rule of thumb)

  • Short-term “hot” logs for investigations + debugging

  • Longer retention for compliance + incident timelines

  • Archive strategy so costs don’t explode

✅ Alerting that’s useful (not noise)

  • Root/admin activity, unusual geo/logins

  • Permission escalations, key creation, MFA disabled

  • Sudden spike in denied actions or data downloads

  • Changes to logging itself (tampering / disable events)

Read the full step-by-step guide here:
https://www.cloudopsnow.in/cloud-audit-logging-what-to-log-retention-and-alerting-use-cases-engineer-friendly-step-by-step/

#CloudSecurity #AuditLogging #SIEM #DevOps #SRE #PlatformEngineering #AWS #Azure #GCP #Kubernetes #Observability #Compliance

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