Audit Logging

VivaEdu maintains comprehensive audit logs for security, compliance, and accountability. This page explains what is logged, why it is logged, and how audit data supports regulatory compliance.

What Gets Logged

VivaEdu logs actions that affect personal data, security, or compliance. The following tables summarise the key action categories.

Data Operations

GDPR and Privacy Operations

Administrative Operations

Automated Operations

Log Entry Structure

Each audit log entry captures the action, the actor, and contextual information to enable traceability.

Metadata Examples

The metadata field captures action-specific context. Examples for key actions:

CSV Export

{
  "filters": { "from": "2026-01-01", "to": "2026-01-31" },
  "rowCount": 150
}

Recording Consent Given

{
  "consentVersion": "2025-12-25-v1",
  "consentTextHash": "<sha256>",
  "source": "student_preferences_put"
}

Retention Cleanup

{
  "retentionDays": 365,
  "cutoff": "2025-01-15T00:00:00.000Z",
  "deletedCount": 42,
  "job": "retention-sweeper"
}

Access Control

Who Can View Audit Logs

• ADMIN role only: Audit log access is restricted to administrators
• Meta-logging: Viewing logs is itself logged (ADMIN_AUDIT_LOG_QUERY)
• Export logging: Exporting logs is logged (ADMIN_AUDIT_LOG_EXPORT_CSV)

Demo Tenant Isolation

• Demo administrators only see logs from their demo tenant
• Production logs are isolated from demo logs
• Cross-tenant log access is not possible

Retention

Export Capabilities

Export Format

Audit logs can be exported as CSV with BOM (Excel-compatible). The export includes the following columns:

Export Limits and Filtering

• Maximum rows: 50,000 rows per export
• Date range: Filter by from/to dates
• Action type: Filter by specific actions
• Entity: Filter by entity type or ID
• Actor: Filter by user ID
• Search: Free-text search across all fields

Compliance Standards

VivaEdu's audit logging supports compliance with the following standards:

System Actor

Some actions are performed automatically by background workers rather than human users. These are logged with a special system actor:

• Actor ID: system
• Actor Role: Null (system, not a user role)
• Common system actions: Retention cleanup, automated media deletion, audit log pruning

A dedicated system user record is auto-created to maintain referential integrity in the audit log.

IP Address Capture

IP addresses are captured on a best-effort basis:

• Primary source: x-forwarded-for header (first IP in chain)
• Fallback: x-real-ip header
• Limitation: May show proxy IP if infrastructure is not properly configured

For Compliance Officers