#1 most frequent
United States of America
63.4%2,482 installations of 3,916
What is AWS CloudTrail?
AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of an AWS account. With CloudTrail, users can log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across AWS infrastructure. CloudTrail provides event history of AWS account activity, including actions taken through the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command line tools, and other AWS services. This event history simplifies security analysis, resource change tracking, and troubleshooting. In addition, you can use CloudTrail to detect unusual activity in AWS accounts. These capabilities help simplify operational analysis and troubleshooting.
Categories & Use Cases
Media
Screenshot of CloudTrail Insights: Identify and respond to unusual operational activity •Unexpected spikes in resource provisioning •Bursts of IAM management actions •Gaps in periodic maintenance activity •Automatic analysis of API calls and usage patterns •Alerts when unusual activity is detected
Who Buys & Uses AWS CloudTrail
#2 most frequent
India
6.0%234 installations of 3,916
#3 most frequent
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
5.5%216 installations of 3,916
A must-have tool-kit for cloud auditing and monitoring
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Mainly we're using it for an audit trail of all actions done in AWS CloudTrail and for user activity of course. Moreover, our Dev-Ops were using it to debug AWS services, especially understanding what and why went wrong during the AWS CloudTrail setup or changes. The scope is mainly audit/logging of API calls and monitoring, mainly detecting unusual or suspicious activities.
Pros
- API Log
- User activity tracking
- Real-time alerts
Cons
- UI/UX is not the easiest and greatest
- Advanced filtering (mainly logs overload)
- Not flexible alerting system
Return on Investment
- Enhanced security of course
- Quick troubleshooting
- Readiness for audit (significant time saver)
Alternatives Considered
Datadog and New Relic
Other Software Used
New Relic, Datadog, Adjust by AppLovin
Cloudtrail - Indispensable logging & audit tool
Pros
- Implementation - easy across organisation/accounts
- AWS support
- Detailed logs
Cons
- Delay
- User interface, must send logs elsewhere to view them
Most Important Features
- Logging
- Ease of use
Return on Investment
- Allows us to investigate any strange api actions
- Increases security
- Audit trail of changes made in AWS
Other Software Used
Splunk Cloud, Amazon CloudWatch
Dive deeper to your logs and understand everything using CloudTrail
Pros
- Logs details
- Easy implementation
- Great support
Cons
- It could be more commercial
Most Important Features
- Log Monitoring
- Integration with our services
Return on Investment
- Since we started using CloudTrail, we could understand better our product usage and consequently understand our customer's profiles.
Alternatives Considered
Amazon CloudWatch
Other Software Used
Evernote, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics, AWS Glue, AWS Batch, AWS Chatbot, AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodePipeline, AWS Firewall Manager, AWS Cloud9
AWS CloudTrail Review
Pros
- AWS native service
- Extremely powerful
- Multi-region support
- Optional encryption
- File integrity validation
Cons
- [In my experience] Cost can easily get out of control with multiple trails on full logging
- Logs can be difficult to decipher
Most Important Features
- Multi-region support
- Log file integrity validation
- Integration with other AWS services like SNS / SQS
- "Always on"
Return on Investment
- Saved us from purchasing and managing 3rd party solutions
- Satisfies Security/Governance requirements
- No upkeep/maintenance
Other Software Used
Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Rancher, Kubernetes, PyCharm, Docker, Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), Postman
