What is the best way to keep track of all activities made in your AWS account?
AWS CloudTrail allows for Auditing, Security Monitoring, and Operational Troubleshooting and it also tracks user activity and API usage. CloudTrail logs, monitors, and saves account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure, giving you control over storage, analysis, and remediation. Show
The resource operations performed on or within a resource in your AWS account are shown in CloudTrail Data Events (also known as “data plane operations”). Frequently, these are operations with a high volume. This article talks about AWS CloudTrail Data Events extensively. In addition to that, it gives a brief introduction to AWS CloudTrail. Table Of Contents
What is AWS CloudTrail?Image SourceAWS CloudTrail is an AWS service that allows you to manage your AWS account’s Governance, Compliance, and Operational and Risk Auditing. CloudTrail records events for actions taken by a user, role, or AWS service. AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface, and AWS SDKs and APIs actions are all examples of events. When you create an AWS account, CloudTrail is automatically enabled. A CloudTrail Event is created whenever something happens in your Amazon Web Services account. In the CloudTrail console, go to Event history to quickly view recent events. Create a trail in your AWS account to keep track of activities and events. A key aspect of security and operational best practices is visibility into your AWS account activity. CloudTrail allows you to track account activity across your AWS infrastructure by Viewing, Searching, Downloading, Archiving, Analyzing, and Responding to it. To assist you in analyzing and responding to activity in your AWS account, you can identify who or what took which action, what resources were used, when the event occurred, and other details. AWS CloudTrail Insights can be enabled on a trail to help you detect and respond to unusual activity. You can use the API to integrate CloudTrail into applications, automate trail creation for your company, check the status of trails you create, and control how users view CloudTrail events. When you create an AWS account, CloudTrail is enabled. A CloudTrail event is created whenever something happens in your AWS account. By going to Event history in the CloudTrail console, you can easily view events. You can view, search, and download event history from your AWS account for the previous 90 days. You can also use CloudTrail to track, analyze, and respond to changes in your AWS resources. A Trail is an Amazon S3 bucket delivery configuration and with Amazon CloudWatch Logs and Amazon CloudWatch Events, you can deliver and analyze events in a trail as well. The CloudTrail console, the AWS CLI, or the CloudTrail API can all be used to make a trail. Hevo Data, a Fully-managed Data Aggregation solution, can help you automate, simplify & enrich your aggregation process in a few clicks. With Hevo’s out-of-the-box connectors and blazing-fast Data Pipelines, you can extract & aggregate data from 100+ Data Sources(including 40+ Free Sources) straight into your Data Warehouse, Database, or any destination. GET STARTED WITH HEVO FOR FREE[/hevoButton] Hevo is the fastest, easiest, and most reliable data replication platform that will save your engineering bandwidth and time multifold. Try our 14-day full access free trial today to experience an entirely automated hassle-free Data Replication! Activity in an AWS account is recorded as an event in CloudTrail. A user, role, or service can perform this activity, which CloudTrail can track. CloudTrail events track API and non-API account activity via the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command-line tools, and other AWS services. Management events, CloudTrail Data Events, and CloudTrail Insights events are the three different types of events that can be logged in CloudTrail. Trails do not log data or Insights events by default. CloudTrail JSON logs are used by all event types. CloudTrail Data Events are records of resource operations performed on or within a resource. Data plane operations are another name for these. CloudTrail Data Events are frequently high-volume operations. The following types of data are kept track of:
Understanding AWS CloudTrail Data Events
How to Log CloudTrail Data Events?CloudTrail Data Events aren’t logged by default in trails. You must add the supported resources or resource types for which you want to collect activity to a trail explicitly to record CloudTrail Data Events. For logging CloudTrail Data Events, additional fees will be applicable. Amazon CloudWatch Events stores the events that your trails have logged. If you set a trail to log CloudTrail Data Events for S3 objects but not management events, your trail will only process and log CloudTrail Data Events for the S3 objects you specify. Amazon CloudWatch Events contains CloudTrail Data Events for these S3 objects. Logging CloudTrail Data Events for Amazon S3 ObjectsWhen you enable logging for all Data Events for an S3 bucket named bucket-1, the following example shows how it works. The CloudTrail user in this case specified an empty prefix as well as the option to log both Read and Write Data Events.
Logging CloudTrail Data Events for Specific S3 ObjectsWhen you configure a trail to log events for specific S3 objects, the following example shows how logging works. In this case, the CloudTrail user specified bucket-3 as the S3 bucket name, with the prefix my-images as the prefix, and the option to log only Write CloudTrail Data Events.
Consider configuring the delivery of log files to an Amazon S3 bucket that belongs to another AWS account instead of logging CloudTrail Data Events for the Amazon S3 bucket where you receive log files if you configure a trail to log all Amazon Data Events in your AWS account. Logging CloudTrail Data Events for S3 Objects in Other AWS Accounts
Logging CloudTrail Data Events for an Amazon S3 Object for Two AWS AccountsThe following example shows how to use CloudTrail Data Events to log events for the same S3 object using two AWS accounts.
Read-only and Write-only EventsYou can choose whether you want read-only events, write-only events, or both when configuring your trail to log CloudTrail data and management events. ReadRead events are API operations that read but do not change your resources. The Amazon EC2 DescribeSecurityGroups and DescribeSubnets API operations, for example, are read-only events. These operations only return information about your Amazon EC2 resources and do not alter your settings. WriteAPI operations that modify (or may modify) your resources are included in write events. The Amazon EC2 RunInstances and TerminateInstances API operations, for example, change your instances. Logging Read and Write events for Separate trails
Logging Data Events with the AWS Command Line Interface
This command returns the trail’s default settings. Log Events by Using Basic Event Selectors
This command returns the event selectors for the trail.
Log Events by Using Advanced Event Selectors
Log all Amazon S3 events for a bucket by using advanced event selectors
Providing a high-quality ETL solution can be a difficult task if you have a large volume of data. Hevo’s automated, No-code platform empowers you with everything you need to have for a smooth data replication experience. Check out what makes Hevo amazing:
Sign up here for a 14-day free trial! How to Monitor CloudTrail Data Events?You can use CloudTrail in conjunction with CloudWatch Logs to keep track of your trail logs and receive notifications when certain events occur. The steps to do that are as follows:
Blazing Trails
Key CloudTrail Audit Logs to Monitor
User AccountsUsing an exposed AWS Secret Access Key and enumerating the key’s permissions is one of the most common ways for an attacker to infiltrate your environment. If the exposed key has extensive management permissions, the attacker can use it to grant themselves more while your security infrastructure is disabled. Monitoring your CloudTrail logs for the following activity can help you catch attackers as they examine their permissions and try to stay in your environment: Unauthorized Activity
An attacker may try to disable the Amazon GuardDuty threat detectors running in your AWS account to go undetected when performing unauthorized or malicious actions. Any instances of GuardDuty detector deletion should always be investigated. Buckets
Networking ComponentsA misconfigured network resource, such as a VPC, Route Table, Network Gateway, Network Access Control List, or Security Group, may also be used by attackers to gain access to your environment. CloudTrail logs can assist you in detecting the following types of potential network attacks and taking the necessary steps to resolve the problem. How to Analyze CloudTrail Data Events?
CloudTrail Identity TypesA userIdentity element is present in every CloudTrail event log, and it describes the user or service that took the action. The type field in this element specifies the type of user or service that made the request, as well as the level of credentials that the user or service used. UserIdentity types in CloudTrail include the following:
Interpreting the Initial Identity of an ‘AssumedRole’ CloudTrail Log
Controlling AssumedRole Session Names
Collect and Analyze CloudTrail Logs with DatadogThe following are some of the advantages of using Datadog as your AWS log monitoring platform:
Export your CloudTrail Logs to Datadog
Explore CloudTrail Logs in Datadog
Detect Security Threats in Real-Time
ConclusionThis article describes AWS CloudTrail Data Events – How to Log, Monitor, and Analyze them in detail. It also gives an overview of AWS CloudTrail. visit our website to explore hevo Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline provides you with a consistent and reliable solution to manage data transfer between a variety of sources and a wide variety of Desired Destinations, with a few clicks. Hevo Data with its strong integration with 100+ sources (including 40+ free sources) allows you to not only export data from your desired data sources & load it to the destination of your choice, but also transform & enrich your data to make it analysis-ready so that you can focus on your key business needs and perform insightful analysis using BI tools.
Want to take Hevo for a spin? Sign Up for a 14-day free trial and experience the feature-rich Hevo suite first hand. You can also have a look at the unbeatable pricing that will help you choose the right plan for your business needs. Which AWS service will track user activity on AWS?AWS CloudTrail monitors and records account activity across your AWS infrastructure, giving you control over storage, analysis, and remediation actions.
Which of these AWS services is recommended to track changes made to your AWS resources?You can use AWS CloudTrail to track which users are changing your AWS resources and infrastructure. CloudTrail is turned on by default for your AWS account.
Which AWS service does the following track user activity and API usage?SageMaker Studio is integrated with AWS CloudTrail to enable administrators to monitor and audit user activity and API calls from Studio notebooks, SageMaker Data Wrangler and SageMaker Canvas.
Which service can be used to record information about API activity in your AWS account?CloudTrail enables auditing, security monitoring, and operational troubleshooting by tracking user activity and API usage. CloudTrail logs, continuously monitors, and retains account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure, giving you control over storage, analysis, and remediation actions.
|