Description

A focused course, tailored for you

Audit-Grade Telemetry for OS Platform Engineers

Design ETW, audit, and signal-capture pipelines that survive SOC 2, FedRAMP, and STIG evidence review without retro-fit.

Your ETW provider and audit-channel design become the single source of truth the moment a FedRAMP, SOC 2, or DoD STIG assessor asks for evidence. If the field schema is unstable, the sequence integrity is unverifiable, or the retention semantics don't match what compliance wrote in the SSP, the finding lands on the platform team, not the security team.

$199 one-time

Tailored to your situation. Access within 24 hours. 30-day money-back.

Includes a hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access, generated for your specific situation.

Why this course

Telemetry and audit code inside an operating-system platform sits one layer below every compliance program that consumes it. SIEM rules, evidence-export jobs, EDR alerting, and assessor sampling all assume the upstream provider behaves like a contract: stable field names across servicing branches, monotonic sequence numbers with explicit gap signalling, signed manifests, predictable retention behaviour, and a documented mapping from each emitted event class to the controls it is meant to satisfy. When any of those assumptions breaks, the platform engineer who owns the provider gets pulled into the audit conversation. The skill this course builds is treating audit-grade telemetry the way you already treat kernel ABIs: a versioned, testable, evidence-bearing contract with the consumers downstream, designed for the assessor as one of those consumers from day one.

What you walk away with

Design an ETW or audit provider whose field schema is treated as a versioned external contract, stable across servicing branches and signed in the manifest.
Build sequence-integrity, gap-detection, and tamper-evidence into the audit channel so an assessor can verify completeness without reading source.
Map every emitted event class to the specific SOC 2, FedRAMP Moderate, and DoD STIG controls it is intended to satisfy, and prove the mapping with a per-control evidence file.
Document retention, rotation, and forwarding semantics so the SSP language your compliance team wrote actually matches what the provider does at runtime.
Survive a sampling-based audit of telemetry evidence without after-the-fact reconstruction or platform-side code changes during the assessment window.

The 12 modules

Module 1. Telemetry as a versioned contract

Reframe an ETW or audit provider from a source of debugging signal into a versioned external contract with downstream consumers. Walk the contract surface that matters to auditors: provider GUID stability, field name and type stability across servicing branches, manifest versioning rules, and deprecation semantics. Produce a contract document the security team can hand an assessor.

Module 2. Field schema design for evidence reuse

Design field names, types, and enumerations so the same emitted record can serve detection, forensics, and assessor evidence without re-parsing. Cover required identity, action, target, outcome, and provenance fields. Show how poorly named or overloaded fields force downstream SIEM rules into brittle regex and produce gaps an assessor will find.

Module 3. Sequence integrity and gap signalling

Build monotonic sequence numbering and explicit gap-signalling primitives into the audit channel. Cover per-channel sequence counters, restart semantics across reboots and servicing, dropped-event signalling versus silent loss, and the test harness an assessor can run to verify completeness over a sampled window.

Module 4. Tamper evidence and signed manifests

Add a tamper-evident layer to the audit channel without rebuilding the kernel transport. Cover per-record hash chaining, signed provider manifests distributed with the OS image, key rotation that survives servicing, and the recovery story when a signing root is rotated or revoked. Show what STIG and FedRAMP reviewers actually ask to see.

Module 5. Retention, rotation, and forwarding semantics

Document what the provider does at runtime when storage fills, when forwarding fails, and when rotation triggers. Align the documented behaviour with the SSP language the compliance team committed to. Walk the failure modes that produce assessor findings: silent rotation on full disks, forwarder back-pressure that drops audit records, retention windows that drift under load.

Module 6. Per-control evidence mapping

Build a map from each emitted event class to the specific SOC 2, FedRAMP Moderate, and DoD STIG controls it is intended to satisfy. Produce a per-control evidence file that names the event class, the field set that proves the control, and the sample query against the SIEM. Hand this file to the security team so they can show it to an assessor without coming back to the platform team.

Module 7. Schema-stability test harness

Build a CI test harness that fails the build when a field name, type, or required enumeration changes in a way that breaks the downstream contract. Cover golden-record fixtures, manifest-diff checks across servicing branches, and the exception path when a field genuinely needs to evolve. The harness is the artefact that proves to an auditor the contract is enforced, not aspired to.

Module 8. Audit channel performance under load

Telemetry that drops events under load produces assessor findings disguised as platform bugs. Cover back-pressure design, ring-buffer sizing, lossless versus lossy channel selection per event class, and the runtime signal the provider emits when it is shedding load. Show how to document the load-shed behaviour so the compliance team can include it in the SSP rather than discover it during an audit.

Module 9. Cross-boundary forwarding and chain of custody

When audit records leave the host, the chain of custody an assessor will trace runs through the forwarder, the broker, and the long-term store. Cover signing-on-egress, transport integrity, the duplicate-detection contract with the receiver, and the documentation the platform team owes the downstream operator so chain of custody is provable end to end.

Module 10. Servicing branches and long-tail compatibility

Audit and ETW providers ship across servicing branches that live for years. Cover the compatibility rules that keep a single SIEM ruleset and a single assessor evidence pack working across the supported branch matrix, the manifest-distribution story across in-place upgrades, and the deprecation runway when a field or event class genuinely has to go away.

Module 11. Working with the security and compliance team

The control mapping, the SSP language, and the assessor narrative are written by the security and compliance team, but they describe what the platform team's provider does. Cover the artefacts to hand them so the SSP language is grounded in provider behaviour, the review cadence that catches divergence early, and the meeting where the platform engineer walks an assessor through a sampled event without surprises.

Module 12. Surviving the assessment window

Run the full assessment-window playbook for the telemetry surface: the evidence pack you hand the security team before the window opens, the sampling and replay drill you run with them a week before, the on-call posture during the window, and the post-assessment finding-triage that distinguishes provider bugs from documentation gaps from genuine control gaps. End the course with the engineer-side artefact set that turns the next audit from a fire drill into a handoff.

How this addresses your situation

Specific modules that map to what you said you are dealing with.

An assessor pulls a sample of audit records from a SIEM and asks the security team what one of the field values means. The security team comes to the platform engineer. Modules 1, 2, and 6 are the artefacts that answer that question without source-diving.

A STIG reviewer asks how the platform proves no audit records were dropped during a sampled window. Modules 3 and 8 are the sequence-integrity and load-shed evidence the platform engineer hands over.

A FedRAMP Moderate continuous-monitoring report shows a divergence between SSP language about retention and observed behaviour. Modules 5 and 11 are the alignment exercise that closes the finding without a code change during the assessment.

A servicing-branch update is about to ship and a field rename is on the change list. Modules 7 and 10 are the contract-stability test that catches it before the downstream SIEM rules break and the next audit picks up the gap.

What you get with this course

Twelve written modules in the Art of Service learning environment, each anchored on a specific assessor-side question the platform engineer ends up answering.
Downloadable manifest-contract template, field-schema fixture set, and gap-detection harness skeleton, ready to drop into a CI pipeline.
Per-control evidence-map template covering SOC 2, FedRAMP Moderate, and the relevant DoD STIG audit checks.
SSP-alignment worksheet for retention, rotation, and forwarding semantics, structured so the compliance team can lift the language directly.
Assessment-window playbook covering the evidence pack, the sampling drill, the on-call posture, and the finding-triage flow.
A hand-built implementation playbook tailored to your own provider surface, delivered alongside course access.

What you will have in hand by Day 1, Week 1, Month 1

Within 24 hours, your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook for your own provider surface is delivered alongside it.

Modules unlock immediately. Recommended cadence is two to three modules per week alongside normal platform work.

Templates and the test harness skeleton are downloadable from module one, so they can land in a CI branch in parallel with the reading.

Before and after

Before

Telemetry and audit code is treated as a debugging utility. Field naming drifts across servicing branches. Sequence integrity is implicit. Retention and forwarding semantics live in code comments rather than the SSP. When an assessor samples a record, the question routes to the platform engineer with no prepared answer, and the audit conversation lands on the provider rather than on the control.

After

The provider is a versioned, signed, testable contract. Sequence integrity and load-shed behaviour are documented and verifiable. Every event class maps to specific SOC 2, FedRAMP, and STIG controls with a per-control evidence file. The security team owns the assessor conversation because the platform team handed them an evidence pack that holds up to sampling. Audits stop landing on the provider.

What happens if you do not address this

Without an audit-grade contract layer, every assessor finding about telemetry routes back to the platform engineer during the assessment window itself. Late-stage code changes in audit and ETW paths are high-risk, slow to land across servicing branches, and almost always force scope to slip on whatever the platform team was actually working on. The cost is paid in roadmap slippage and in repeated annual surprises, not in a single visible event.

Who it is for

Platform and OS engineers who own audit, ETW, signal-capture, or equivalent telemetry surfaces inside an operating system, hyperscaler, or enterprise platform product. You write the providers and manifests other people's compliance and detection logic depend on. You read kernel-level code, you understand servicing branches, and you have been pulled into at least one audit conversation where someone asked what an event field actually means or whether a missing sequence number is a bug or a drop.

Who this is NOT for. Application developers who consume telemetry but do not design it. Security analysts who write SIEM rules on top of an existing provider. Compliance writers who author SSP language but do not touch source. GRC tooling vendors. People looking for an introduction to ETW for end-user troubleshooting.

How it arrives

Text-based course in the Art of Service learning environment, plus downloadable templates and worked examples for every module, plus the hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access.

Time investment. Roughly four to six hours per week across four to six weeks. Each module is built to be readable in one sitting and to leave behind one concrete artefact, not an abstract insight.

Why $199 is the right number

Internal compliance training is typically written for the security or GRC team and treats telemetry as a given. Vendor SIEM training is written for the consumer of telemetry, not the producer. The free Microsoft ETW documentation covers the provider mechanics but does not address audit, sampling, or assessor evidence. This course sits in the gap: the producer-side contract design that makes the assessor conversation routine.

FAQ

Is this Windows-specific?

The worked examples lean on ETW and the Windows audit channel because that is where the producer-side primitives are richest and most documented. The contract-design, sequence-integrity, evidence-mapping, and assessor-window patterns generalise to any OS or platform telemetry surface, and the implementation playbook is tailored to your own provider.

Will this teach me how to write SIEM rules?

No. This course is for the engineer who builds the provider the SIEM rules read from. It teaches you to design the producer-side contract so the rule-writers and the assessors can do their job without coming back to you.

Do I need compliance experience already?

No. The course assumes you can read kernel and platform code, that you know your way around servicing branches, and that you have at least been adjacent to one audit conversation. It does not assume you have written an SSP or run an assessment.

What does the tailored implementation playbook contain?

A hand-built mapping from the course modules onto your specific provider surface: which modules apply directly, which need adaptation for the platform you ship on, which artefacts to produce first, and which conversations to schedule with your security and compliance counterparts. Delivered within 24 hours of purchase alongside course access.

How is the course delivered?

Written modules in the Art of Service learning environment, plus the downloadable templates and worked examples, plus the implementation playbook. No live sessions required.

30-day money-back guarantee. If after a week of working through the materials this is not what you needed, reply to the receipt email and a full refund is processed. No questions, no forms.

Within 24 hours your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.