Creating a trail for an organization with the AWS Command Line Interface

You can create an organization trail by using the AWS CLI. The AWS CLI is regularly updated with additional functionality and commands. To help ensure success, be sure that you have installed or updated to a recent AWS CLI version before you begin.

Note

The examples in this section are specific to creating and updating organization trails. For examples of using the AWS CLI to manage trails, see Managing trails with the AWS CLI and Configuring CloudWatch Logs monitoring with the AWS CLI. When creating or updating an organization trail with the AWS CLI, you must use an AWS CLI profile in the management account or delegated administrator account with sufficient permissions. If you are converting an organization trail to a non-organization trail, you must use the management account for the organization.

You must configure the Amazon S3 bucket used for an organization trail with sufficient permissions.

Create or update an Amazon S3 bucket to use to store the log files for an organization trail

You must specify an Amazon S3 bucket to receive the log files for an organization trail. This bucket must have a policy that allows CloudTrail to put the log files for the organization into the bucket.

The following is an example policy for an Amazon S3 bucket named myOrganizationBucket, which is owned by the organization's management account. Replace myOrganizationBucket, region, managementAccountID, trailName, and o-organizationID with the values for your organization

This bucket policy contains three statements.

• The first statement allows CloudTrail to call the Amazon S3 GetBucketAcl action on the Amazon S3 bucket.

• The second statement allows logging in the event the trail is changed from an organization trail to a trail for that account only.

• The third statement allows logging for an organization trail.

The example policy includes an aws:SourceArn condition key for the Amazon S3 bucket policy. The IAM global condition key aws:SourceArn helps ensure that CloudTrail writes to the S3 bucket only for a specific trail or trails. In an organization trail, the value of aws:SourceArn must be a trail ARN that is owned by the management account, and uses the management account ID.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AWSCloudTrailAclCheck20150319",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "Service": [
                    "cloudtrail.amazonaws.com"
                ]
            },
            "Action": "s3:GetBucketAcl",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::myOrganizationBucket",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "aws:SourceArn": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:region:managementAccountID:trail/trailName"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Sid": "AWSCloudTrailWrite20150319",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "Service": [
                    "cloudtrail.amazonaws.com"
                ]
            },
            "Action": "s3:PutObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::myOrganizationBucket/AWSLogs/managementAccountID/*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "s3:x-amz-acl": "bucket-owner-full-control",
                    "aws:SourceArn": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:region:managementAccountID:trail/trailName"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Sid": "AWSCloudTrailOrganizationWrite20150319",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "Service": [
                    "cloudtrail.amazonaws.com"
                ]
            },
            "Action": "s3:PutObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::myOrganizationBucket/AWSLogs/o-organizationID/*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "s3:x-amz-acl": "bucket-owner-full-control",
                    "aws:SourceArn": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:region:managementAccountID:trail/trailName"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

This example policy does not allow any users from member accounts to access the log files created for the organization. By default, organization log files are accessible only to the management account. For information about how to allow read access to the Amazon S3 bucket for IAM users in member accounts, see Sharing CloudTrail log files between AWS accounts.

Enabling CloudTrail as a trusted service in AWS Organizations

Before you can create an organization trail, you must first enable all features in Organizations. For more information, see Enabling All Features in Your Organization, or run the following command using a profile with sufficient permissions in the management account:

aws organizations enable-all-features

After you enable all features, you must configure Organizations to trust CloudTrail as a trusted service. .

To create the trusted service relationship between AWS Organizations and CloudTrail, open a terminal or command line and use a profile in the management account. Run the aws organizations enable-aws-service-access command, as demonstrated in the following example.

aws organizations enable-aws-service-access --service-principal cloudtrail.amazonaws.com

Using create-trail

Creating an organization trail that applies to all Regions

To create an organization trail that applies to all Regions, add the --is-organization-trail and --is-multi-region-trail options.

Note

When you create an organization trail with the AWS CLI, you must use an AWS CLI profile in the management account or delegated administrator account with sufficient permissions.

The following example creates an organization trail that delivers logs from all Regions to an existing bucket named my-bucket:

aws cloudtrail create-trail --name my-trail --s3-bucket-name my-bucket --is-organization-trail --is-multi-region-trail

To confirm that your trail exists in all Regions, the IsOrganizationTrail and IsMultiRegionTrail parameters in the output are both set to true:

{
    "IncludeGlobalServiceEvents": true, 
    "Name": "my-trail", 
    "TrailARN": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:us-east-2:123456789012:trail/my-trail", 
    "LogFileValidationEnabled": false, 
    "IsMultiRegionTrail": true, 
    "IsOrganizationTrail": true,
    "S3BucketName": "my-bucket"
}

Note

Run the start-logging command to start logging for your trail. For more information, see Stopping and starting logging for a trail.

Creating an organization trail as a single-Region trail

The following command creates an organization trail that only logs events in a single AWS Region, also known as a single-Region trail. The AWS Region where events are logged is the Region specified in the configuration profile for the AWS CLI.

aws cloudtrail create-trail --name my-trail --s3-bucket-name my-bucket --is-organization-trail

For more information, see Naming requirements.

Sample output:

{
    "IncludeGlobalServiceEvents": true, 
    "Name": "my-trail", 
    "TrailARN": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:us-east-2:123456789012:trail/my-trail", 
    "LogFileValidationEnabled": false,
    "IsMultiRegionTrail": false,
    "IsOrganizationTrail": true,
    "S3BucketName": "my-bucket"
}

By default, the create-trail command creates a single-Region trail that does not enable log file validation.

Note

Run the start-logging command to start logging for your trail.

Running update-trail to update an organization trail

You can run the update-trail command to change the configuration settings for an organization trail, or to apply an existing trail for a single AWS account to an entire organization. Remember that you can run the update-trail command only from the Region in which the trail was created.

Note

If you use the AWS CLI or one of the AWS SDKs to update a trail, be sure that the trail's bucket policy is up-to-date. For more information, see Creating a trail for an organization with the AWS Command Line Interface.

When you update an organization trail with the AWS CLI, you must use an AWS CLI profile in the management account or delegated administrator account with sufficient permissions. If you want to convert an organization trail to a non-organization trail, you must use the management account for the organization, because the management account is the owner of all organization resources.

CloudTrail updates organization trails in member accounts even if a resource validation fails. Examples of validation failures include:

• an incorrect Amazon S3 bucket policy

• an incorrect Amazon SNS topic policy

• inability to deliver to a CloudWatch Logs log group

• insufficient permission to encrypt using a KMS key

A member account with CloudTrail permissions can see any validation failures for an organization trail by viewing the trail's details page on the CloudTrail console, or by running the AWS CLI get-trail-status command.

Applying an existing trail to an organization

To change an existing trail so that it also applies to an organization instead of a single AWS account, add the --is-organization-trail option, as shown in the following example.

Note

Use the management account to change an existing non-organization trail to an organization trail.

aws cloudtrail update-trail --name my-trail --is-organization-trail

To confirm that the trail now applies to the organization, the IsOrganizationTrail parameter in the output has a value of true.

{
    "IncludeGlobalServiceEvents": true, 
    "Name": "my-trail", 
    "TrailARN": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:us-east-2:123456789012:trail/my-trail", 
    "LogFileValidationEnabled": false, 
    "IsMultiRegionTrail": true, 
    "IsOrganizationTrail": true, 
    "S3BucketName": "my-bucket"
}

In the preceding example, the trail was configured to apply to all Regions ("IsMultiRegionTrail": true). A trail that applied only to a single Region would show "IsMultiRegionTrail": false in the output.

Converting an organization trail that applies to one Region to apply to all Regions

To change an existing organization trail so that it applies to all Regions, add the --is-multi-region-trail option as shown in the following example.

aws cloudtrail update-trail --name my-trail --is-multi-region-trail

To confirm that the trail now applies to all Regions, the IsMultiRegionTrail parameter in the output has a value of true.

{
    "IncludeGlobalServiceEvents": true, 
    "Name": "my-trail", 
    "TrailARN": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:us-east-2:123456789012:trail/my-trail", 
    "LogFileValidationEnabled": false, 
    "IsMultiRegionTrail": true, 
    "IsOrganizationTrail": true,
    "S3BucketName": "my-bucket"
}