append-only log

Evidentiary Value

Historical sequences written without retroactive alteration capabilities yield durable proof of operational milestones. An append-only log establishes an unbroken chronological chain showing which party initiated an action and when the entry took place. Contradictory oral recollections dissolve when checked against entries committed sequentially during active collaboration.

Retention Burden

Maintaining continuous serial entries increases storage consumption and administrative attention over prolonged periods. Disk capacity fills as unpruned histories accumulate across months of operational friction. Administrative hours spent auditing voluminous uncompressed sequences strain corporate capacity when older files lack automated indexing.

Such overhead remains unavoidable if complete provenance must survive intact.

Integrity Boundary

Hardware access permits physical replacement of raw drive sectors despite software constraints. Cryptographic hashing or off-site synchronization must accompany an append-only log to prevent deliberate physical truncation by system administrators. Without external verification, an attacker possessing root permissions can delete the final file segment entirely.

Physical tampering sets the strict boundary of this format.