NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 AU-2 — Event Logging

What this control requires

Identifies and logs system events, coordinates with organizational entities, specifies event types and frequency, and reviews logs periodically for incident investigation. This control supports the Event Logging System capability within the Audit and Accountability family.

In plain English

Identifies and logs system events, coordinates with organizational entities, specifies event types and frequency, and reviews logs periodically for incident investigation. In practice, this means you can prove you audit management-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

SP 800-53 is the catalogue every U.S. federal authorisation (FedRAMP, FISMA, CMMC) and most regulated industries point at. A missing control surfaces as a Plan of Action & Milestones (POA&M) item that an Authorizing Official must approve before the Authority To Operate is granted or renewed.

This control is rated high. Auditors expect a named owner, a remediation SLA, and a tooling artefact that evidences continuous operation.

What an auditor looks for

A 3PAO (FedRAMP) or Independent Assessor (NIST RMF) tests against NIST SP 800-53A assessment procedures. For each control they expect a documented implementation that addresses every assessment objective (Examine, Interview, Test) and an implementation summary in the System Security Plan.

Within Audit and Accountability, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control AU-2) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Incident Response

Runbook. Maintain a runbook keyed by incident type with named roles (IC, comms, scribe), an out-of-band comms channel, and a 72-hour timeline for external notification.

Tabletop. Run a quarterly tabletop exercise (ransomware, insider, supply-chain) and feed gaps back into the runbook.

Logging Monitoring

AWS. Org-trail CloudTrail to a central log archive account, GuardDuty in every region, and Security Hub for cross-source correlation.

Azure. Pipe every diagnostic setting into a central Log Analytics workspace; onboard Microsoft Sentinel for SIEM/SOAR.

GCP. Aggregate audit logs in a dedicated logging project with sink to BigQuery; enable Security Command Center Premium and route findings to Chronicle SIEM.

Operational checklist

• Audit. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Event. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Response. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• System. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Control. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, reviews, system, events, capability, accountability, response, frequency.

Evidence to collect

• Ticketing Workflow. ticketing_workflow evidence

Workflow metrics (ServiceNow, Jira) show approvals and remediation. Focus: Event Logging.

Common pitfalls

• Runbooks that name a role but no person, or list a paging channel that no longer exists.
• Per-account logging that nobody stitches together at the org level — incidents that cross accounts go undetected for days.

How it maps to other frameworks

Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.

• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.3.6 — Audit Record Reduction and Report Generation
• BSI C5:2020 OPS-15 — Logging and Monitoring - Accountability
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC7.4 — Incident Response
• CIS Controls v8 17.8 — Conduct Post-Incident Reviews

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

• Control AU-5(2) — Real-Time Alerts
• Control AU-9(5) — Dual Authorization
• Control IR-5 — Incident Monitoring
• Control AU-12(3) — Changes By Authorized Individuals
• Control IR-3 — Incident Response Testing
• Control AU-5(5) — Alternate Audit Logging Capability

References

• NIST Computer Security Resource Center — NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5
• Catalogue identifier: Control AU-2

Topics: logging monitoringincident responsechange management