What is the purpose of transaction logs?

The purpose of transaction logs is primarily to monitor transactions related to applications or systems. Transaction logs serve as a record of all transactions that have been processed by a system, including details such as the time of the transaction, the involved data, the user or application that initiated the transaction, and the outcome. This record is essential for various reasons, including tracking changes to data, debugging issues, auditing user actions, and ensuring accountability within the system.

When analyzing transaction logs, organizations can gain insights into user behavior, transaction patterns, and overall system functioning. This information can help identify anomalies or potential security breaches, enabling a proactive approach to safeguarding data integrity and availability.

In contrast, while tracking and analyzing system performance, controlling access to IT resources, and maintaining data integrity may all be relevant activities within IT governance and management, they are not the primary purpose of transaction logs. Each of these activities might utilize data from transaction logs but does not define their main function. Transaction logs are fundamentally about capturing and documenting the transactions that take place within a system or application.