Logging, Monitoring and Log Retention Policy

Document control

Field	Value
Document status	Active policy document
Owner	Security / Operations
Approver	Management
Review frequency	Annual or on material change
Classification	Customer-shareable

Purpose

Define requirements for collecting, protecting, reviewing, and retaining logs required for security, operations, troubleshooting, and compliance.

Log sources

Relevant sources may include application logs, authentication logs, administrative activity, API access, system logs, network/security events, database logs, deployment logs, backup logs, and third-party service logs.

Required log fields

Where supported, logs should include timestamp, user/service identity, source, action, target resource, status/result, request identifier, and error details without exposing sensitive secrets.

Protection

Logs must be protected from unauthorized access, tampering, and unnecessary exposure of sensitive data. Secrets and personal data should not be logged unless required and protected.

Monitoring

Security-relevant alerts should be reviewed based on severity. Repeated failures, unusual access, privileged changes, and backup/job failures should be investigated.

Retention

Retention should align with contractual, operational, security, and legal requirements. Retention periods may differ by system criticality and log type.

Evidence to maintain

Logging configuration, retention settings, alert rules, review records, incident-linked logs, and exception approvals.