In the context of system audits, what would validate user activities?

System audit logs serve a crucial role in validating user activities within a system. These logs automatically record actions taken by users, such as logins, file accesses, changes made to system settings, and other administrative tasks. By maintaining a detailed and chronological record of these activities, audit logs enable organizations to monitor behaviors and detect any unauthorized actions or policy violations.

When an audit is conducted, these logs provide comprehensive evidence of what users have done within the system during a specified period. This documentation is essential for forensic investigations, compliance assessments, and ensuring accountability among users. The detailed data within audit logs helps security teams and auditors verify that user activities align with organizational policies and identify any anomalies that may indicate potential security breaches.

In contrast, user access controls focus on the permissions granted to users, which is important for enforcing security policies but does not inherently capture the actual activities performed by those users. Change management procedures are intended to oversee and log changes made to systems and applications, but they are not specifically designed for tracking user activity. Incident response reports, while valuable for understanding security incidents, primarily focus on responses to events rather than ongoing user activity validation. Thus, system audit logs are the most direct and effective means of validating user activities in the context of system audits.