Audit Trail
The system-generated, tamper-evident record of actions taken on a record — who did what, and when — used to prove integrity, chain of custody, and compliance.
An audit trail is the automatically generated record of actions taken on a record and on the records system itself: who created, viewed, edited, reclassified, moved, placed a hold on, or disposed of a record, and exactly when. A good audit trail is complete, tamper-evident (users can’t quietly alter it), and retained long enough to prove what happened.
Audit trails are how the abstract qualities of trustworthy recordkeeping become provable facts. They demonstrate integrity (the record is unaltered, or changes are documented), chain of custody, defensible disposition (destruction followed an authorized schedule and holds were honored), and access accountability. The recordkeeping standards treat audit capability as essential — DoD 5015.2 explicitly requires it of records management software.