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Ensure CloudTrail is enabled in all regions

Severity: High

Resource Types: AWS::CloudTrail::Trail, AWS::CloudTrail::EventSelector

Description​

AWS CloudTrail is a web service that records AWS API calls for your account and delivers log files to you. The recorded information includes the identity of the API caller, the time of the API call, the source IP address of the API caller, the request parameters, and the response elements returned by the AWS service. CloudTrail provides a history of AWS API calls for an account, including API calls made via the Management Console, SDKs, command line tools, and higher-level AWS services (such as CloudFormation).

The AWS API call history produced by CloudTrail enables security analysis, resource change tracking, and compliance auditing. Additionally,

  • ensuring that a multi-regions trail exists will ensure that unexpected activity occurring in otherwise unused regions is detected
  • ensuring that a multi-regions trail exists will ensure that Global Service Logging is enabled for a trail by default to capture recording of events generated on AWS global services
  • for a multi-regions trail, ensuring that management events configured for all type of Read/Writes ensures recording of management operations that are performed on all resources in an AWS account

Remediation​

Perform the following to enable global (Multi-region) CloudTrail logging:

From Console​

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the IAM console at cloudtrail

  2. Click on Trails on the left navigation pane

  3. Click Get Started Now , if presented

    • Click Add new trail
    • Enter a trail name in the Trail name box
    • Set the Apply trail to all regions option to Yes
    • Specify an S3 bucket name in the S3 bucket box
    • Click Create

  4. If 1 or more trails already exist, select the target trail to enable for global logging

  5. Click the edit icon (pencil) next to Apply trail to all regions , Click Yes and Click Save.

  6. Click the edit icon (pencil) next to Management Events click All for setting Read/Write Events and Click Save.

From Command Line​

aws cloudtrail create-trail --name <trail_name> --bucket-name <s3_bucket_for_cloudtrail> --is-multi-region-trail
Note: Creating CloudTrail via CLI without providing any overriding options configures Management Events to 'set' All 'type' of Read/Writes by default

aws cloudtrail update-trail --name <trail_name> --is-multi-region-trail