DEFINITION
Audit Trail
An audit trail is the chronological record of who created, changed, or deleted a transaction or master data record, and when. Its completeness determines whether a finding can be evidenced and defended.
Audit trail gaps take several forms: transactions with no change history, records amended or deleted without a trace, and periods where logging was disabled or incomplete.
The gap itself is a reportable finding. Where the trail is incomplete, conclusions about the underlying transactions cannot be substantiated, which is a control weakness independent of whether anything improper occurred.