Best practices for monitoring AWS CloudTrail logs

AWS CloudTrail is a service that helps to add visibility and auditability to an AWS environment by tracking the who, what, where, and when of activity in your AWS accounts. It records each instance of activity as an event, which is a JSON object containing details such as the time at which it occurred, who performed the action, the resources affected, etc. These events are available for up to 90 days after they occur and can be filtered on the Event History page in the AWS CloudTrail console. Datadog helps you collect and monitor your CloudTrail logs by integrating directly with AWS services like CloudTrail, Amazon S3, Kinesis Firehose, and Lambda. It automatically parses all incoming AWS CloudTrail logs using log processing pipelines and provides cost-effective collection and archiving of these logs through its Logging without Limits™ feature. Datadog's Threat Detection Rules can be used to detect critical security and operational issues in real-time, including those related to unauthorized activity, S3 bucket enumeration or modification, and networking component misconfigurations. Additionally, Datadog Cloud SIEM allows you to apply strict detection rules to your entire event stream as it is ingested, helping you catch threats as they occur. To export CloudTrail logs from AWS to Datadog, you can use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, a fully managed service that automates the delivery of real-time streaming data to external data storage and analysis repositories. Once your audit logs are streaming into Datadog's Log Explorer, you can filter and search them or build custom dashboards with data visualizations for high-level perspectives on your AWS environment's health and security.