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AWS CloudTrail

Service for logging API calls and events in AWS services

AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of your AWS account. With CloudTrail, you can log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure. CloudTrail provides event history of your AWS account activity, including changes made to your AWS resources.

5 minutes 5 Questions

AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of your AWS account. It records AWS API calls for your account and delivers log files to your Amazon S3 bucket. These recorded API calls can be from the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command line tools, and higher-level AWS services. CloudTrail provides visibility into user activity by recording actions taken on your account. For each action, you can see who performed it, when it was performed, from where it was requested, and what was done. This information helps with security analysis, resource change tracking, and compliance auditing. Key features of CloudTrail include: 1. AWS account activity monitoring: Records API calls across all AWS regions. 2. Log file storage: Delivers log files to an S3 bucket you specify, with optional encryption. 3. Event history: Provides a viewable, searchable, downloadable, and immutable record of the past 90 days of management events. 4. Integration with other AWS services: Works with CloudWatch Logs for monitoring, SNS for notifications, and EventBridge for automating responses. 5. Organization trails: Can create a trail that logs all events for all AWS accounts in an AWS Organizations organization. 6. Data events: Can log data plane operations on resources, such as S3 object-level activity or Lambda function executions. 7. Management events: Records operations performed on resources in your AWS account. 8. Insights events: Helps identify unusual activity by analyzing API call volumes. CloudTrail is essential for security best practices as it provides an audit trail for actions taken within your AWS environment, aiding in troubleshooting operational issues and meeting regulatory compliance requirements. It operates with negligible impact on performance and is a foundational service for any well-architected AWS solution.

Concepts covered: Activity Monitoring, Management Events, Event Filtering, Event History, Trail, Insight Events, Log File Validation, Data Events, Security Management, Integration with AWS Services

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AWS Certified Solutions Architect - AWS CloudTrail Example Questions

Test your knowledge of Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

Question 1

What is the purpose of enabling AWS CloudTrail Insights?

To provide actionable insights and quicker root cause analysis for abnormal API activity within an AWS account To automate the creation of AWS Config rules within an AWS account To enable advanced encryption for AWS CloudTrail logs stored in Amazon S3 To automatically export AWS CloudTrail logs to an on-premises storage solution

Correct Answer: To provide actionable insights and quicker root cause analysis for abnormal API activity within an AWS account

AWS CloudTrail Insights is a feature that analyzes API activity within an AWS account and provides actionable insights and quicker root cause analysis for abnormal activity. Insights uses machine learning algorithms to identify threats and suspicious activity, and provides visualizations and alerts to help administrators quickly respond to and investigate potential issues.

Question 2

Which AWS service can be used in conjunction with AWS CloudTrail to receive notifications when specific events occur?

Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management) AWS CloudFormation AWS Config

Correct Answer: Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service)

Amazon SNS can be used to send notifications when specific events occur in AWS CloudTrail. These notifications can be used to trigger automated responses, such as running a Lambda function or sending an email.

Question 3

What is the purpose of AWS CloudTrail trails?

To record and store account activity and log data for compliance, governance, and security purposes To launch and manage EC2 instances in an automated manner To securely and reliably store data in the cloud To create and manage virtual private networks (VPNs) on the cloud

Correct Answer: To record and store account activity and log data for compliance, governance, and security purposes

AWS CloudTrail trails are used to enable logging, storing, and auditing of account activity and log data in your AWS account. They allow administrators to understand who did what, when, and from where in AWS. This service is essential for compliance, governance, and security purposes. The other options listed do not represent valid use cases of AWS CloudTrail.

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