Central audit logging mechanism in personal data web services

Abstract

Personal data have been compiled and harnessed by a great number of establishments to execute their legal activities. Establishments are legally bound to maintain the confidentiality and security of personal data. Hence it is a requirement to provide access logs for the personal information. Depending on the needs and capacity, personal data can be opened to the users via platforms such as file system, database and web service. Web service platform is a popular alternative since it is autonomous and can isolate the data source from the user. In this paper, the way to log personal data accessed via web service method has been discussed. As an alternative to classical method in which logs were recorded and saved by client applications, a different mechanism of forming a central audit log with API manager has been investigated. By forging a model policy to exemplify central logging method, its advantages and disadvantages have been explored. It has been concluded in the end that this model could be employed in centrally recording audit logs.