CloudTrail Events: A Comprehensive Exploration of Management, Data, and Insights Events and Their Significance

A CloudTrail event signifies the recording of an operation within an AWS account, capturing actions performed by IAM identities or services monitored by CloudTrail. These events encompass a comprehensive record of both API and non-API activities executed through various means such as the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command line tools, and other AWS services. CloudTrail categorizes events into three types: management events, data events, and CloudTrail Insights events. By default, trails and event data stores document management events, excluding data and Insights events. Regardless of the event type, CloudTrail utilizes a JSON log format to store information.

Management events

Management events within CloudTrail offer insights into control plane operations or management activities conducted on resources within your AWS account. These operations involve configuring various aspects of your environment and are essential for overall account administration.

For instance, management events encompass activities like configuring security measures, as demonstrated by AWS Identity and Access Management AttachRolePolicy API operations. Another example is the registration of devices, exemplified by Amazon EC2 CreateDefaultVpc API operations. Similarly, configuring rules for routing data can be seen in management events such as Amazon EC2 CreateSubnet API operations…