BE-022 — Implement Audit Logging & Compliance API
📚 Overview
The Audit Logging & Compliance API provides immutable, searchable, and secure audit records for every significant action performed across the TruthBounty platform.
As TruthBounty grows into a decentralised verification ecosystem, every protocol operation must be traceable for transparency, security, governance accountability, compliance investigations, and operational debugging.
Rather than allowing individual services to maintain their own audit logs, this API centralises audit event collection, storage, querying, retention policies, and compliance reporting.
The Audit Logging & Compliance API will become the dependency for:
- Administration Console
- Moderator Dashboard
- Governance Portal
- Security Monitoring
- Compliance Reporting
- Incident Response
- Protocol Analytics
Every backend service assumes audit events are permanently recorded and cannot be modified after creation.
🧠 Background
TruthBounty manages critical protocol activities including:
- claim creation
- verification submissions
- dispute resolution
- governance voting
- staking
- reward distribution
- moderation decisions
- administrative actions
- authentication events
Every action affecting protocol state should be fully traceable to support transparency, accountability, and forensic investigations.
Audit logs are not intended to replace blockchain records but to capture backend operations and user interactions that occur off-chain.
🎯 Objectives
Implement a production-ready Audit Logging & Compliance API that:
- records immutable audit events
- supports advanced searching
- exposes compliance reports
- enforces retention policies
- tracks administrative actions
- supports forensic investigations
- exposes monitoring metrics
- returns standardised API responses
🧩 Technical Scope
1. Audit Event Collection
Record audit events for:
- authentication
- authorization
- API requests
- administrative actions
- moderator actions
- governance activities
- verification operations
- dispute handling
- reward distribution
- configuration changes
Every event should include sufficient contextual metadata.
2. Immutable Audit Storage
Store:
- event identifier
- timestamp
- actor identifier
- actor role
- affected resource
- action performed
- request metadata
- IP address
- user agent
- correlation identifier
Audit entries must never be editable.
3. Search API
Support searching by:
- user
- action
- resource
- date range
- event type
- request identifier
- IP address
- moderator
- administrator
Search performance should remain efficient for very large datasets.
4. Compliance Reporting
Generate reports for:
- administrator activity
- moderation actions
- governance actions
- authentication history
- failed access attempts
- security events
- protocol operations
Reports should support export in multiple formats.
5. Retention Policies
Implement configurable retention rules supporting:
- archive policies
- legal hold
- long-term storage
- automatic cleanup
- export before deletion
Retention behaviour should comply with governance requirements.
6. Security
Protect audit records using:
- role-based access control
- encryption at rest
- tamper detection
- access auditing
- integrity verification
Only authorised users should access audit records.
7. Monitoring
Expose metrics including:
- audit events generated
- storage utilisation
- search latency
- export requests
- failed writes
- integrity verification status
8. Performance
Implement:
- asynchronous event ingestion
- efficient indexing
- partitioned storage
- compressed archives
- scalable querying
The audit system should not become a bottleneck for protocol operations.
9. Future Extensibility
Design the architecture to support:
- blockchain audit verification
- SIEM integrations
- external compliance platforms
- anomaly detection
- AI-assisted investigations
- cross-service correlation
10. API Standardisation
Return consistent response objects containing:
- audit identifiers
- timestamps
- metadata
- pagination information
- request identifiers
Errors must follow backend API standards.
✅ Acceptance Criteria
- Audit events are recorded successfully.
- Audit entries are immutable.
- Search functionality operates correctly.
- Compliance reports are generated.
- Retention policies are enforced.
- Monitoring metrics are exposed.
- Unit and integration tests pass.
🧪 Testing Requirements
Implement tests covering:
- audit event creation
- immutable storage
- search functionality
- compliance reporting
- retention policies
- security controls
- concurrent event ingestion
- export operations
- monitoring metrics
- performance benchmarking
📚 Documentation
Update:
- Backend API Documentation
- Audit Logging Architecture
- Compliance Guide
- OpenAPI Specification
- Operations Manual
- Security Documentation
🔗 Dependencies
Depends on:
- BE-001 — Implement Backend Authentication Gateway
- BE-015 — Implement Administration & Moderation API
- BE-016 — Implement Protocol Health & System Monitoring API
Blocks:
- Administration Console
- Moderator Dashboard
- Governance Portal
- Security Monitoring
- Compliance Reporting
- Incident Response
- Protocol Analytics
🏷 Labels
- backend
- security
- architecture
- protocol-critical
- complexity-medium
- stellar-wave
📊 Complexity
Medium
The Audit Logging & Compliance API establishes the operational accountability layer of TruthBounty, ensuring every significant backend action is permanently recorded, searchable, secure, and suitable for governance oversight and forensic investigation.
⏱ Estimated Effort
5–7 days
🚀 Definition of Done
- Immutable audit logging implemented.
- Search API operational.
- Compliance reporting available.
- Retention policies enforced.
- Security controls implemented.
- Monitoring metrics exposed.
- Tests passing.
- Documentation updated.
- Ready for integration with the Administration Console, Moderator Dashboard, Governance Portal, Security Monitoring, Compliance Reporting, Incident Response, and Protocol Analytics.
BE-022 — Implement Audit Logging & Compliance API
📚 Overview
The Audit Logging & Compliance API provides immutable, searchable, and secure audit records for every significant action performed across the TruthBounty platform.
As TruthBounty grows into a decentralised verification ecosystem, every protocol operation must be traceable for transparency, security, governance accountability, compliance investigations, and operational debugging.
Rather than allowing individual services to maintain their own audit logs, this API centralises audit event collection, storage, querying, retention policies, and compliance reporting.
The Audit Logging & Compliance API will become the dependency for:
Every backend service assumes audit events are permanently recorded and cannot be modified after creation.
🧠 Background
TruthBounty manages critical protocol activities including:
Every action affecting protocol state should be fully traceable to support transparency, accountability, and forensic investigations.
Audit logs are not intended to replace blockchain records but to capture backend operations and user interactions that occur off-chain.
🎯 Objectives
Implement a production-ready Audit Logging & Compliance API that:
🧩 Technical Scope
1. Audit Event Collection
Record audit events for:
Every event should include sufficient contextual metadata.
2. Immutable Audit Storage
Store:
Audit entries must never be editable.
3. Search API
Support searching by:
Search performance should remain efficient for very large datasets.
4. Compliance Reporting
Generate reports for:
Reports should support export in multiple formats.
5. Retention Policies
Implement configurable retention rules supporting:
Retention behaviour should comply with governance requirements.
6. Security
Protect audit records using:
Only authorised users should access audit records.
7. Monitoring
Expose metrics including:
8. Performance
Implement:
The audit system should not become a bottleneck for protocol operations.
9. Future Extensibility
Design the architecture to support:
10. API Standardisation
Return consistent response objects containing:
Errors must follow backend API standards.
✅ Acceptance Criteria
🧪 Testing Requirements
Implement tests covering:
📚 Documentation
Update:
🔗 Dependencies
Depends on:
Blocks:
🏷 Labels
📊 Complexity
Medium
The Audit Logging & Compliance API establishes the operational accountability layer of TruthBounty, ensuring every significant backend action is permanently recorded, searchable, secure, and suitable for governance oversight and forensic investigation.
⏱ Estimated Effort
5–7 days
🚀 Definition of Done