Audit trail

In telecommunication, the term audit trail has the following meanings:

1. A record of both completed and attempted accesses and service.

2. Data in the form of a logical path linking a sequence of events, used to trace the transactions that have affected the contents of a record.

3. In INFOSEC, a chronological record of system activities to enable the reconstruction and examination of the sequence of events and/or changes in an event.

Note: Audit trail may apply to information in an AIS, or to the transfer of COMSEC material[?].

Source: from Federal Standard 1037C and from the National Information Systems Security Glossary