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# Access Transparency on Confluent Cloud

Access Transparency shows you when and why Confluent personnel access your
Dedicated Apache Kafka® clusters. This feature helps you maintain
compliance with regulatory requirements. It also shows proper governance
controls and confirms that Confluent accesses your data only for
legitimate operational purposes.

Access Transparency provides near real-time visibility into Confluent
personnel access, including:

* What activity was performed
* When the access occurred
* Why the access was necessary
* Where the access originated from (country or location)

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## Requirements

To use Access Transparency, you must meet the following requirements:

* **Premier support plan**: You must be subscribed to the
  [Premier support plan](../../support.md#support-plans-overview).
* **Audit logs enabled**: You must be actively consuming Confluent Cloud audit logs,
  which are enabled by default.
* **Explicit enablement**: Access Transparency logs are disabled by default and
  must be explicitly enabled.
* **Support request**: Request Access Transparency logging from
  [Confluent Support](https://support.confluent.io).
* **Cluster type**: Available only on Dedicated Kafka clusters.
* **Supported cloud service providers**: Available on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

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## Enable logging

After you meet the [requirements](#access-transparency-requirements), to
enable Access Transparency logging:

1. Contact your account executive or
   [Confluent Support](https://support.confluent.io).
2. Request Access Transparency logs to be enabled in your organization.

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## Log fields

Access Transparency logs include the following fields:

| Field               | Description                            |
|---------------------|----------------------------------------|
| Event ID            | A unique number to identify each event |
| Timestamp           | When the action happened               |
| Employee job family | The job role of the Confluent employee |
| Location            | Where the action occurred (country)    |
| Result              | The outcome of the action              |

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## Event type

Access Transparency logs are generated with the event type:

`io.confluent.cloud/access-transparency`

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## Event method

Access Transparency uses the following event method:

| Method name                   | Description                                                                                                                         |
|-------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| `confluent.privileged.access` | Generated when Confluent personnel access your Dedicated Kafka<br/>cluster for support, maintenance, or other operational purposes. |

#### NOTE
There are no failure logs for Access Transparency events. Only successful
access events are logged.

For details about the Access Transparency event methods, see
[Access Transparency Auditable Event Methods](event-methods/access-transparency.md#access-transparency-auditable-events).

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## Consume logs

After Access Transparency logging is enabled for your organization, to consume
Access Transparency logs:

1. Use the same audit log consumption methods you use for regular audit logs.
2. Filter for events with type `io.confluent.cloud/access-transparency`.

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## Use cases

Use Access Transparency for:

* **Compliance requirements**: Meeting regulatory requirements that mandate
  transparency into data access, including the Digital Operational
  Resilience Act (DORA), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the
  Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), the Bundesanstalt für
  Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin), the Australian Prudential
  Regulation Authority (APRA), and other financial services regulations.
* **Security auditing**: Maintaining detailed audit trails of all access to your
  infrastructure for security monitoring and incident response.
* **Trust and transparency**: Building trust with your customers by providing
  visibility into operational access and demonstrating proper governance
  controls.
* **Incident investigation**: Understanding what actions were taken during
  support incidents to help with root cause analysis and resolution.

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## Related content

- [Audit Log Concepts](cloud-audit-log-concepts.md#cloud-audit-logs)
- [Access and Consume Audit Logs](configure.md#cloud-activate-audit-logs)
- [Audit Log Schema](audit-log-schema.md#cloud-audit-log-event-schema)