Control statement
Retain audit records for [Organization-defined: time period] to provide support for after-the-fact investigations of incidents and to meet regulatory and organizational information retention requirements.
Discussion
Organizations retain audit records until it is determined that the records are no longer needed for administrative, legal, audit, or other operational purposes. This includes the retention and availability of audit records relative to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, subpoenas, and law enforcement actions. Organizations develop standard categories of audit records relative to such types of actions and standard response processes for each type of action. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) General Records Schedules provide federal policy on records retention.
Organization-defined parameters
These values must be resolved through the organization’s tailoring and governance process. Bracketed parameter references in the control text identify where a decision is required.
From control text to operational evidence
Use Audit Record Retention as a testable risk decision. Translate the official statement into accountable people, repeatable processes, configured technology, and evidence that demonstrates the outcome over time. In this family, pay particular attention to audit event design, trustworthy collection, retention, review, and investigation support.
Implementation workflow
- Define the control boundary, responsible owner, inherited portions, and systems or processes in scope.
- Resolve each organization-defined parameter before declaring the control implemented.
- Document how the implementation satisfies every clause of the official control statement.
- Collect evidence as a normal byproduct of operation rather than only before an assessment.
- Review exceptions, changes, and monitoring results on a risk-based cadence.
Evidence examples
- logging standards and event-selection decisions
- sample audit records and retention settings
- time-synchronization evidence
- alert and review records
Common failure patterns
- collecting logs without defined use cases
- critical events missing from the audit trail
- retention shorter than investigative needs
- logs accessible to the same administrators being monitored
Questions practitioners should ask
- What risk decision is this control intended to support in this system?
- Which parts are implemented locally, inherited, shared, or not applicable—and what evidence supports that decision?
- Do the documented narrative, deployed configuration, operating process, and collected evidence agree?
- What event or threshold requires the implementation to be reviewed or changed?
Assessment objectives and methods
Show the assessment objective
audit records are retained for [Organization-defined: time period] to provide support for after-the-fact investigations of incidents and to meet regulatory and organizational information retention requirements.
Examine
- Audit and accountability policy
- system security plan
- privacy plan
- audit record retention policy and procedures
- security plan
- organization-defined retention period for audit records
- audit record archives
- audit logs
- audit records
- other relevant documents or records
Interview
- Organizational personnel with audit record retention responsibilities
- organizational personnel with information security and privacy responsibilities
- system/network administrators
Related controls
These relationships come from the official OSCAL catalog. They indicate useful dependencies or context, not automatic inheritance or equivalence.
Related NIST SP 800-171 requirements
These Rev. 3 requirements cite this base control or one of its enhancements as a source. The relationship does not by itself determine contractual applicability or complete implementation.
Control enhancements
Enhancements add specificity, strength, or scope to the base control. Baseline badges show explicit selections in the official SP 800-53B OSCAL profiles.
AU-11(1) — Long-term Retrieval Capability
Employ [Organization-defined: measures] to ensure that long-term audit records generated by the system can be retrieved.
Official discussion
Organizations need to access and read audit records requiring long-term storage (on the order of years). Measures employed to help facilitate the retrieval of audit records include converting records to newer formats, retaining equipment capable of reading the records, and retaining the necessary documentation to help personnel understand how to interpret the records.
Organization-defined parameters (1)
Assessment objectives and methods
[Organization-defined: measures] are employed to ensure that long-term audit records generated by the system can be retrieved.
Examine
- Audit and accountability policy
- system security plan
- privacy plan
- audit record retention policy and procedures
- system design documentation
- system configuration settings and associated documentation
- audit record archives
- audit logs
- audit records
- other relevant documents or records
Interview
- Organizational personnel with audit record retention responsibilities
- organizational personnel with information security and privacy responsibilities
- system/network administrators
Test
- Mechanisms implementing audit record retention capability
Authoritative sources
Bare Metal Cyber is an independent educational publisher and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NIST. Official control requirements and interpretations remain with NIST and the responsible authorizing organization.