As cloud adoption increases, a universal challenge is how to efficiently enable, store and analyze cloud logs
To meet varying business, regulatory and security requirements of log retention, collection must be tailored to an organization’s needs
Logs exist on both the control plane and data plane, with the control plane containing audit logs by default while the data plane does not
By understanding the differences between the two planes, an organization can maximize its cloud logging visibility while minimizing costs from unnecessary data ingestion and storage that may violate privacy regulations
To optimize cloud logging, organizations must define key business requirements like critical functions, dependencies and relevant regulatory frameworks
Compliance and legal teams can help outline the applicable requirements, which largely depend on industry, location and data type
The three major cloud service providers (CSPs) - AWS, Azure and GCP - each have unique logging services, tools and best practices, making it challenging for organizations to manage cloud logging effectively
