AWS › AWS CloudTrail & Auditing

How can an organization consolidate CloudTrail logging across multiple AWS accounts using AWS Organizations?

Intermediate

Answer

AWS Organizations supports creating an organization trail, which automatically applies a single CloudTrail configuration across every member account in the organization, delivering all of their logs into a centralized S3 bucket typically owned by a dedicated security or logging account, ensuring consistent audit coverage across the entire organization without needing to manually configure CloudTrail separately in every individual account.
aws cloudtrail create-trail --name org-trail --s3-bucket-name central-logging-bucket --is-organization-trail
Real-world example A company with fifty separate AWS accounts under a single AWS Organization sets up one organization trail that automatically captures and centralizes CloudTrail logs from every account into a dedicated logging account, simplifying auditing significantly.

Common follow-ups: Can individual member accounts disable or modify an organization trail?;What IAM permissions are needed to set up an organization trail?