AWS CloudTrail vs ELK

Overview

AWS CloudTrail

Stacks304

Followers280

Votes14

ELK

Stacks863

Followers941

Votes23

AWS CloudTrail vs ELK: What are the differences?

AWS CloudTrail is a service that logs and monitors AWS API activity, providing visibility into user actions and changes made in the AWS environment. ELK, on the other hand, is an open-source stack that combines Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana for log management, analysis, and visualization. Here are the key differences between AWS CloudTrail and ELK:

Purpose and Scope: AWS CloudTrail is a fully managed service by AWS that focuses on auditing and tracking activities within an AWS environment. It records API calls made by users, services, or other AWS resources and delivers log files to Amazon S3 or CloudWatch Logs for further analysis. In contrast, ELK is an open-source stack that combines Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana to form a robust log management and analytics platform. ELK is more general-purpose and can be used to collect, process, and analyze logs from various sources, not limited to AWS.
Deployment and Infrastructure: AWS CloudTrail is a managed service, which means users don't need to set up and maintain the infrastructure for log collection and storage. It is seamlessly integrated with other AWS services, simplifying setup and configuration. On the other hand, ELK is a self-hosted solution, requiring users to deploy and manage their Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana instances. While ELK offers more control over the infrastructure and data, it also entails additional maintenance efforts and operational responsibilities.
Data Collection and Integration: CloudTrail is tightly integrated with AWS services and automatically records API activities for supported services within the AWS ecosystem. It provides detailed information about changes to resources, security events, and user actions in the AWS environment. ELK, being a general-purpose log management solution, can collect logs from a wide range of sources, including AWS, on-premises systems, applications, and third-party services.
Log Analysis and Visualization: AWS CloudTrail primarily focuses on auditing and tracking AWS API activity. While it provides basic log search and filtering capabilities, its primary use case is for compliance and governance purposes. On the other hand, ELK is a versatile log analysis and visualization platform. Elasticsearch, as the core component, offers powerful full-text search and indexing capabilities, enabling fast and efficient log querying. Kibana provides a user-friendly interface for visualizing log data through customizable dashboards and charts, making it easier for users to gain insights and detect patterns in the data.

In summary, AWS CloudTrail is a managed service specialized in auditing and monitoring AWS API activity, whereas ELK is an open-source stack used for general log management and analytics across various data sources.

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Advice on AWS CloudTrail, ELK

Jigar

Security Software Engineer at Cisco

Jul 2, 2020

Needs adviceon

AWS IAM

Amazon EC2

Splunk Cloud

We would like to detect unusual config changes that can potentially cause production outage.

Such as, SecurityGroup new allow/deny rule, AuthZ policy change, Secret key/certificate rotation, IP subnet add/drop. The problem is the source of all of these activities is different, i.e., AWS IAM, Amazon EC2, internal prod services, envoy sidecar, etc.

Which of the technology would be best suitable to detect only IMP events (not all activity) from various sources all workload running on AWS and also Splunk Cloud?

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Detailed Comparison

AWS CloudTrail	ELK
With CloudTrail, you can get a history of AWS API calls for your account, including API calls made via the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command line tools, and higher-level AWS services (such as AWS CloudFormation). The AWS API call history produced by CloudTrail enables security analysis, resource change tracking, and compliance auditing. 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.	It is the acronym for three open source projects: Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. Elasticsearch is a search and analytics engine. Logstash is a server‑side data processing pipeline that ingests data from multiple sources simultaneously, transforms it, and then sends it to a "stash" like Elasticsearch. Kibana lets users visualize data with charts and graphs in Elasticsearch.
Increased Visibility- CloudTrail provides increased visibility into your user activity by recording AWS API calls. You can answer questions such as, what actions did a given user take over a given time period? For a given resource, which user has taken actions on it over a given time period? What is the source IP address of a given activity? Which activities failed due to inadequate permissions?;Durable and Inexpensive Log File Storage- CloudTrail uses Amazon S3 for log file storage and delivery, so log files are stored durably and inexpensively. You can use Amazon S3 lifecycle configuration rules to further reduce storage costs. For example, you can define rules to automatically delete old log files or archive them to Amazon Glacier for additional savings.;Easy Administration- CloudTrail is a fully managed service; you simply turn on CloudTrail for your account using the AWS Management Console, the Command Line Interface, or the CloudTrail SDK and start receiving CloudTrail log files in the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket that you specify.;Reliable- CloudTrail continuously transports events from AWS services using a highly available and fault tolerant processing pipeline.;Timely Delivery- CloudTrail typically delivers events within 15 minutes of the API call.;Log File Aggregation- CloudTrail can be configured to aggregate log files across multiple accounts and regions so that log files are delivered to a single bucket. Please refer to the of the AWS CloudTrail User Guide for detailed instructions.;Notifications for Log File Delivery- CloudTrail can be configured to publish a notification for each log file delivered, thus enabling you to automatically take action upon log file delivery. CloudTrail uses the Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) for notifications.;Choice of Partner Solutions- Multiple partners including AlertLogic, Boundary, Loggly, Splunk and Sumologic offer integrated solutions to analyze CloudTrail log files. These solutions include features like change tracking, troubleshooting, and security analysis.	-
Statistics
Stacks 304	Stacks 863
Followers 280	Followers 941
Votes 14	Votes 23
Pros & Cons
Pros 7 Very easy setup 3 Good integrations with 3rd party tools 2 Very powerful 2 Backup to S3	Pros 14 Open source 4 Can run locally 3 Good for startups with monetary limitations 1 Easy to setup 1 External Network Goes Down You Aren't Without Logging Cons 5 Elastic Search is a resource hog 3 Logstash configuration is a pain 1 Bad for startups with personal limitations
Integrations
Boundary Loggly Splunk Cloud	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to AWS CloudTrail, ELK?

Papertrail

Papertrail helps detect, resolve, and avoid infrastructure problems using log messages. Papertrail's practicality comes from our own experience as sysadmins, developers, and entrepreneurs.

Logmatic

Get a clear overview of what is happening across your distributed environments, and spot the needle in the haystack in no time. Build dynamic analyses and identify improvements for your software, your user experience and your business.

Loggly

It is a SaaS solution to manage your log data. There is nothing to install and updates are automatically applied to your Loggly subdomain.

Logentries

Logentries makes machine-generated log data easily accessible to IT operations, development, and business analysis teams of all sizes. With the broadest platform support and an open API, Logentries brings the value of log-level data to any system, to any team member, and to a community of more than 25,000 worldwide users.

Logstash

Logstash is a tool for managing events and logs. You can use it to collect logs, parse them, and store them for later use (like, for searching). If you store them in Elasticsearch, you can view and analyze them with Kibana.

Graylog

Centralize and aggregate all your log files for 100% visibility. Use our powerful query language to search through terabytes of log data to discover and analyze important information.

Sematext

Sematext pulls together performance monitoring, logs, user experience and synthetic monitoring that tools organizations need to troubleshoot performance issues faster.

Fluentd

Fluentd collects events from various data sources and writes them to files, RDBMS, NoSQL, IaaS, SaaS, Hadoop and so on. Fluentd helps you unify your logging infrastructure.

Sumo Logic

Cloud-based machine data analytics platform that enables companies to proactively identify availability and performance issues in their infrastructure, improve their security posture and enhance application rollouts. Companies using Sumo Logic reduce their mean-time-to-resolution by 50% and can save hundreds of thousands of dollars, annually. Customers include Netflix, Medallia, Orange, and GoGo Inflight.

Splunk

It provides the leading platform for Operational Intelligence. Customers use it to search, monitor, analyze and visualize machine data.

Related Comparisons

Purpose and Scope: AWS CloudTrail is a fully managed service by AWS that focuses on auditing and tracking activities within an AWS environment. It records API calls made by users, services, or other AWS resources and delivers log files to Amazon S3 or CloudWatch Logs for further analysis. In contrast, ELK is an open-source stack that combines Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana to form a robust log management and analytics platform. ELK is more general-purpose and can be used to collect, process, and analyze logs from various sources, not limited to AWS.
Deployment and Infrastructure: AWS CloudTrail is a managed service, which means users don't need to set up and maintain the infrastructure for log collection and storage. It is seamlessly integrated with other AWS services, simplifying setup and configuration. On the other hand, ELK is a self-hosted solution, requiring users to deploy and manage their Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana instances. While ELK offers more control over the infrastructure and data, it also entails additional maintenance efforts and operational responsibilities.
Data Collection and Integration: CloudTrail is tightly integrated with AWS services and automatically records API activities for supported services within the AWS ecosystem. It provides detailed information about changes to resources, security events, and user actions in the AWS environment. ELK, being a general-purpose log management solution, can collect logs from a wide range of sources, including AWS, on-premises systems, applications, and third-party services.
Log Analysis and Visualization: AWS CloudTrail primarily focuses on auditing and tracking AWS API activity. While it provides basic log search and filtering capabilities, its primary use case is for compliance and governance purposes. On the other hand, ELK is a versatile log analysis and visualization platform. Elasticsearch, as the core component, offers powerful full-text search and indexing capabilities, enabling fast and efficient log querying. Kibana provides a user-friendly interface for visualizing log data through customizable dashboards and charts, making it easier for users to gain insights and detect patterns in the data.

AWS CloudTrail vs ELK