At safedrop we use UTC Universal Time for all our audit trail entries and delivery receipts.
It’s crucial to use UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) timestamps for log file entries in a secure system. This standardised format ensures that no matter where the users or systems are located globally, all entries are recorded in a consistent and unambiguous manner.
UTC is 1 hour behind London in Summer time, no difference Winter time. UTC is 5 hours ahead of New York in Summer time, 4 hours ahead in Winter time.
UTC has been adopted by most modern software vendors, it is a fixed time standard, with no daylight savings time. This simplicity greatly reduces any confusion as to when something happened. If you’re involved in forensics for a hack or leak, auditing or troubleshooting, using UTC for everything means it is easy to correlate entries in different systems, like web servers, database and email servers.
Background
UTC is pretty much the same as GMT, but where GMT is a Time Zone, UTC is a Time Standard. This means that no country or territory officially uses UTC as a local time.
Why UTC
The official abbreviation for Coordinated Universal Time is UTC. It came about as a compromise between English and French speakers, as we know the English and French can’t agree on much, so this is nice.
- Coordinated Universal Time in English would normally be abbreviated CUT.
- Temps Universel Coordonné in French would normally be abbreviated TUC.
So we’re left with UTC, which sort of is the same as both. Makes complete sense right?!
