Sending events to CloudWatch Logs - Amazon CloudTrail
Configuring CloudWatch Logs monitoring with the consoleConfiguring CloudWatch Logs monitoring with the Amazon CLILimitation
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Sending events to CloudWatch Logs

When you configure your trail to send events to CloudWatch Logs, CloudTrail sends only the events that match your trail settings. For example, if you configure your trail to log data events only, your trail sends data events only to your CloudWatch Logs log group. CloudTrail supports sending data, Insights, and management events to CloudWatch Logs. For more information, see Working with CloudTrail log files.

Note

Only the management account can configure a CloudWatch Logs log group for an organization trail using the console. The delegated administrator can configure a CloudWatch Logs log group using the Amazon CLI or CloudTrail CreateTrail or UpdateTrail API operations.

To send events to a CloudWatch Logs log group:

Configuring CloudWatch Logs monitoring with the console

You can use the Amazon Web Services Management Console to configure your trail to send events to CloudWatch Logs for monitoring.

Creating a log group or specifying an existing log group

CloudTrail uses a CloudWatch Logs log group as a delivery endpoint for log events. You can create a log group or specify an existing one.

To create or specify a log group for an existing trail

  1. Make sure you log in with an administrative user or role with sufficient permissions to configure CloudWatch Logs integration. For more information, see Granting permission to view and configure Amazon CloudWatch Logs information on the CloudTrail console.

    Note

    Only the management account can configure a CloudWatch Logs log group for an organization trail using the console. The delegated administrator can configure a CloudWatch Logs log group using the Amazon CLI or CloudTrail CreateTrail or UpdateTrail API operations.

  2. Open the CloudTrail console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/cloudtrail/.

  3. Choose the trail name. If you choose a trail that applies to all Regions, you will be redirected to the Region in which the trail was created. You can create a log group or choose an existing log group in the same Region as the trail.

    Note

    A trail that applies to all Regions sends log files from all Regions to the CloudWatch Logs log group that you specify.

  4. In CloudWatch Logs, choose Edit.

  5. For CloudWatch Logs, choose Enabled.

  6. For Log group name, choose New to create a new log group, or Existing to use an existing one. If you choose New, CloudTrail specifies a name for the new log group for you, or you can type a name. For more information about naming, see CloudWatch log group and log stream naming for CloudTrail.

  7. If you choose Existing, choose a log group from the drop-down list.

  8. For Role name, choose New to create a new IAM role for permissions to send logs to CloudWatch Logs. Choose Existing to choose an existing IAM role from the drop-down list. The policy statement for the new or existing role is displayed when you expand Policy document. For more information about this role, see Role policy document for CloudTrail to use CloudWatch Logs for monitoring.

    Note

    When you configure a trail, you can choose an S3 bucket and SNS topic that belong to another account. However, if you want CloudTrail to deliver events to a CloudWatch Logs log group, you must choose a log group that exists in your current account.

  9. Choose Save changes.

Specifying an IAM role

You can specify a role for CloudTrail to assume to deliver events to the log stream.

To specify a role

  1. By default, the CloudTrail_CloudWatchLogs_Role is specified for you. The default role policy has the required permissions to create a CloudWatch Logs log stream in a log group that you specify, and to deliver CloudTrail events to that log stream.

    Note

    If you want to use this role for a log group for an organization trail, you must manually modify the policy after you create the role. For more information, see this policy example and Creating a trail for an organization.

    1. To verify the role, go to the Amazon Identity and Access Management console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/iam/.

    2. Choose Roles and then choose the CloudTrail_CloudWatchLogs_Role.

    3. From the Permissions tab, expand the policy to view its contents.

  2. You can specify another role, but you must attach the required role policy to the existing role if you want to use it to send events to CloudWatch Logs. For more information, see Role policy document for CloudTrail to use CloudWatch Logs for monitoring.

Viewing events in the CloudWatch console

After you configure your trail to send events to your CloudWatch Logs log group, you can view the events in the CloudWatch console. CloudTrail typically delivers events to your log group within an average of about 5 minutes of an API call. This time is not guaranteed. Review the Amazon CloudTrail Service Level Agreement for more information.

To view events in the CloudWatch console

  1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/cloudwatch/.

  2. In the left navigation pane, under Logs, choose Log groups.

  3. Choose the log group that you specified for your trail.

  4. Choose the log stream that you want to view.

  5. To see the details of the event that your trail logged, choose an event.

Note

The Time (UTC) column in the CloudWatch console shows when the event was delivered to your log group. To see the actual time that the event was logged by CloudTrail, see the eventTime field.

Configuring CloudWatch Logs monitoring with the Amazon CLI

You can use the Amazon CLI to configure CloudTrail to send events to CloudWatch Logs for monitoring.

Creating a log group

  1. If you don't have an existing log group, create a CloudWatch Logs log group as a delivery endpoint for log events using the CloudWatch Logs create-log-group command.

    aws logs create-log-group --log-group-name name

    The following example creates a log group named CloudTrail/logs:

    aws logs create-log-group --log-group-name CloudTrail/logs

  2. Retrieve the log group Amazon Resource Name (ARN).

    aws logs describe-log-groups

Creating a role

Create a role for CloudTrail that enables it to send events to the CloudWatch Logs log group. The IAM create-role command takes two parameters: a role name and a file path to an assume role policy document in JSON format. The policy document that you use gives AssumeRole permissions to CloudTrail. The create-role command creates the role with the required permissions.

To create the JSON file that will contain the policy document, open a text editor and save the following policy contents in a file called assume_role_policy_document.json. 

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "cloudtrail.amazonaws.com"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}

Run the following command to create the role with AssumeRole permissions for CloudTrail. 

aws iam create-role --role-name role_name --assume-role-policy-document file://<path to assume_role_policy_document>.json

When the command completes, take a note of the role ARN in the output.

Creating a policy document

Create the following role policy document for CloudTrail. This document grants CloudTrail the permissions required to create a CloudWatch Logs log stream in the log group you specify and to deliver CloudTrail events to that log stream.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {

      "Sid": "AWSCloudTrailCreateLogStream2014110",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "logs:CreateLogStream"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:logs:region:accountID:log-group:log_group_name:log-stream:accountID_CloudTrail_region*"
      ]

    },
    {
      "Sid": "AWSCloudTrailPutLogEvents20141101",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "logs:PutLogEvents"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:logs:region:accountID:log-group:log_group_name:log-stream:accountID_CloudTrail_region*"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Save the policy document in a file called role-policy-document.json.

If you're creating a policy that might be used for organization trails as well, you will need to configure it slightly differently. For example, the following policy grants CloudTrail the permissions required to create a CloudWatch Logs log stream in the log group you specify and to deliver CloudTrail events to that log stream for both trails in the Amazon account 111111111111 and for organization trails created in the 111111111111 account that are applied to the Amazon Organizations organization with the ID of o-exampleorgid:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AWSCloudTrailCreateLogStream20141101",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "logs:CreateLogStream"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:logs:us-east-2:111111111111:log-group:CloudTrail/DefaultLogGroupTest:log-stream:111111111111_CloudTrail_us-east-2*",
                "arn:aws:logs:us-east-2:111111111111:log-group:CloudTrail/DefaultLogGroupTest:log-stream:o-exampleorgid_*"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Sid": "AWSCloudTrailPutLogEvents20141101",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "logs:PutLogEvents"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:logs:us-east-2:111111111111:log-group:CloudTrail/DefaultLogGroupTest:log-stream:111111111111_CloudTrail_us-east-2*",             
                "arn:aws:logs:us-east-2:111111111111:log-group:CloudTrail/DefaultLogGroupTest:log-stream:o-exampleorgid_*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

For more information about organization trails, see Creating a trail for an organization.

Run the following command to apply the policy to the role.

aws iam put-role-policy --role-name role_name --policy-name cloudtrail-policy --policy-document file://<path to role-policy-document>.json

Updating the trail

Update the trail with the log group and role information using the CloudTrail update-trail command.

aws cloudtrail update-trail --name trail_name --cloud-watch-logs-log-group-arn log_group_arn --cloud-watch-logs-role-arn role_arn

For more information about the Amazon CLI commands, see the Amazon CloudTrail Command Line Reference.

Limitation

CloudWatch Logs and EventBridge each allow a maximum event size of 256 KB. Although most service events have a maximum size of 256 KB, some services still have events that are larger. CloudTrail does not send these events to CloudWatch Logs or EventBridge.

Starting with CloudTrail event version 1.05, events have a maximum size of 256 KB. This is to help prevent exploitation by malicious actors, and allow events to be consumed by other Amazon services, such as CloudWatch Logs and EventBridge.