ABSTRACT
Health information professionals will define an audit log as a record of activity in the patient chart. A network person will explain that it is a log of all network activity. An information security officer will describe an audit log as a log of a users activity within a system. Audit trails can be used to examine the sequence of events that occurred on a system or within an application or across a network. Audit trails can hold individuals accountable for their actions. Audit data can indicate who logged into a system and accessed certain files, the time of the access, and the type of access. Configuration of audit capabilities is critical. Audit trails generate tremendous amounts of data. Left unmanaged, event data can overwhelm a system and, in some cases, cause it to shutdown. In healthcare, many larger organizations have built data repositories to house audit data.
