Event-Driven Architecture for Compliance: Building the Immutable Audit Trail

Append-only

The immutable event log â€” the architectural property that makes event sourcing a natural compliance pattern

Event sourcing â€” storing state as an append-only log of immutable events â€” is one of the most compliance-friendly architectural patterns available. The event log is the audit trail. But GDPR's right to erasure creates a tension with append-only semantics that requires a cryptographic solution. Kafka log compaction deletes data in ways that can violate retention obligations. Getting the event schema versioning wrong means your compliance evidence becomes unreadable as the system evolves. These are engineering problems with precise solutions.

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