AU.L2-3.3.4: Audit Failure Alerting for CMMC Level 2
When your audit logging system fails silently, you lose critical visibility into system activity—and fail compliance. AU.L2-3.3.4 requires organizations to detect and alert on audit logging process failures in real time. This control closes the gap between logging infrastructure and actual threat detection.
What this means
Audit failure alerting mandates that your organization monitor the health and function of audit logging processes and generate immediate alerts when those processes malfunction, become unavailable, or stop recording activity. This ensures that security teams know instantly when audit logs are not being collected, preventing gaps in accountability and compliance evidence.
How to comply
- 1.Deploy monitoring tools that continuously check the status of all audit logging processes across systems and applications.
- 2.Configure real-time alerts to notify security or operations teams immediately when audit logging fails or becomes unavailable.
- 3.Define alert thresholds that trigger on audit log failures, capacity exhaustion, or logging service crashes.
- 4.Establish documented response procedures for when audit failure alerts fire, including escalation paths and remediation steps.
- 5.Test alert mechanisms regularly to ensure they function reliably and notify the correct personnel.
- 6.Retain audit failure alert logs and responses as evidence of monitoring effectiveness.
Evidence auditors look for
- Monitoring tool configuration showing continuous audit process health checks.
- Alert rule definitions specifying failure conditions and notification recipients.
- Logs of audit failure alerts triggered and corresponding response actions taken.
- Documentation of personnel responsible for responding to audit failure alerts.
- Test results demonstrating alert delivery and team notification during simulated failures.
- Incident tickets showing remediation of audit logging process failures within SLA.
- Screenshots of dashboard or monitoring platform displaying real-time audit process status.
Frequently asked questions
When will FAQs be available?
The FAQ for this control is currently being prepared.
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