Steps To Preserve Log Integrity For Compliance And Evidence

In the past few years, companies have spent billions of dollars to update their IT infrastructures to meet requirements from various European and US government regulations. One of the more noticeable and most important recommendations of these regulations is record-keeping. For example, Sarbanes-Oxley recommends that all companies "maintain financial records for seven years." In order to ensure the accuracy of corporate financial and business information, this recommendation also pertains to records that are used to "audit unauthorised access, misuse and fraud." Other regulations such as HIPAA also recommend keeping records for up to six years.

The integrity of information is crucial when submitting evidence to the court. Just like crime-scene evidence, which prosecutors must prove hasn't been tampered with, electronic data submitted to the court must adhere to the same stringent requirements. As such, log data generated by the IT infrastructure also has to be archived in its original and unaltered format.

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