Access logs are crucial for monitoring, troubleshooting, and auditing traffic patterns and application behavior. Without these logs, it becomes challenging to detect anomalies, diagnose issues, and maintain a comprehensive record of incoming and outgoing requests. This lack of visibility can lead to undetected security incidents and operational inefficiencies. The absence of access logging reduces visibility into application activity, making it difficult to identify malicious traffic, troubleshoot errors, or perform forensic investigations during security incidents. It also limits an organization’s ability to demonstrate compliance with regulatory and security standards that require log retention and monitoring.
An attacker floods the ALB with malicious requests in an attempt to disrupt application availability (DoS attack). Without access logging, security teams are unable to trace the origin of the attack, analyze patterns in the malicious traffic, or determine the extent of the impact. If access logging were enabled, the logs would capture critical details such as source IP addresses, request paths, and timestamps, allowing teams to respond effectively and block suspicious traffic.
