What practice involves keeping logs for a necessary amount of time to support past events analysis?

Log retention refers to the specific practice of maintaining logs for a defined period to support analysis of past events. This is critical in various contexts, such as security incidents, system performance monitoring, and compliance with regulatory requirements. Proper log retention helps organizations track activities, analyze trends, and respond to incidents effectively. By retaining logs, organizations can provide evidence for audits, troubleshoot issues, and enhance their overall security posture by understanding past behaviors and events.

While event logging involves the process of generating logs for activities that occur, and monitoring implies real-time oversight, the primary purpose of log retention is to explicitly store and manage those logs for future reference. Data archiving, on the other hand, typically focuses on storing data that is no longer actively used but may be needed in the future. The key distinction is that log retention is specifically tailored to preserving logs with an emphasis on duration and analysis of historical events.