No CloudWatch alarm for CloudTrail configuration changes

Severity: High
Service: Monitoring and alarms
Check ID: CLOUDWATCH_ALARM_CLOUDTRAIL_CHANGES

What this check finds

No CloudWatch Logs metric filter and alarm cover CloudTrail configuration events (CreateTrail, UpdateTrail, DeleteTrail, StartLogging, StopLogging). Without this, disabling audit logging goes undetected until it is too late. CIS v1.4 §4.5.

Passing looks like: CloudWatch alarm for CloudTrail changes configured.

How to fix it

Create a CloudWatch Logs metric filter on the CloudTrail log group covering trail config events, then create an alarm. Filter pattern: {($.eventName=CreateTrail)||($.eventName=UpdateTrail)|| ($.eventName=DeleteTrail)||($.eventName=StartLogging)||($.eventName=StopLogging)}. Attach an SNS topic for email or PagerDuty notification.

Compliance controls it is evidence for

A failing result counts against these controls in KloudLytics; a passing one is evidence towards them. How compliance mapping works

Compliance controls mapped to No CloudWatch alarm for CloudTrail configuration changes
Framework	Controls
CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark v5.0.0	4.5 Ensure CloudTrail configuration changes are monitored
NIST SP 800-53 Rev5 (Moderate)	AU-6 Audit Record Review, Analysis, and Reporting AU-9 Protection of Audit Information SI-4 System Monitoring
NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0	PR.PS-04 Log records are generated for monitoring DE.AE-02 Adverse events are analyzed DE.CM-01 Networks are monitored
ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A	A.5.28 Collection of evidence A.8.15 Logging A.8.16 Monitoring activities

Checked on every scan

KloudLytics runs this check each time it scans a connected AWS account, through a read-only role, and lists every affected resource with its region. On Pro and Business a fix is written for the specific resource rather than the general case above. The exact access it needs

More Monitoring and alarms checks

All Monitoring and alarms checks