Audit Trail

What Does Audit Trail Mean?

An audit trail, in the context of IT, is a chain of evidence in the form of hard or electronic business transactions or communications resulting from business processes, functions or programming executions.

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Techopedia Explains Audit Trail

An audit trail describes the chronological sequence of transactions, communications or both, and serves as a tool for facilitating financial or legal research and investigations to verify that all involved parties are fair, honest and truthful.

An audit trail may involve a specific purchase, sale or instance of noncompliance and includes a number of applications across a variety of fields, including:

  • Telecommunications
  • Information security/auditing
  • Communication security/auditing
  • Accounting (hard copy or electronic documentation)
  • Medical investigations
  • Research investigations
  • Legal investigations
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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…