A few days ago one of our overzealous Project Managers who often wears more hats than are reasonably manageable made a colosal mistake! I don’t want to shame him publicly…let’s just say his name is 3-letters long and rhymes with Slack. After a long day he was helping the team migrate a client’s primary website domain from GoDaddy into Cloudflare, to get things prepped for launch…but his wires got crossed and he grabbed the email domain instead. At GoDaddy, that email domain looked like nothing more than a forwarder—no DNS entries in sight—so our unnamed jack-of-all-trades figured, “Cool, this should be simple.”
Mistake #1: always verify the existing DNS setup before you touch anything.
Mistake #2: technology is a lot like plumbing, it’s a lot more complicated than it looks.
Fast-forward through ***’s frantic clicks: nameservers swapped to Cloudflare, DNS entries ported in… and then realizing the mix-up. In a bid to undo the chaos, he quickly deleted the domain in Cloudflare and flipped the nameservers back at GoDaddy. Only one problem: he’d never exported a zone dump from GoDaddy….so when the dust settled, the DNS entries were gone from both ends. The domain sat parked, MX records vanished, and emails were completely FROZEN.
OUCH!!!
How Audit Logs Saved the Day
- Security Monitoring & Incident Response
- Within seconds of the zone deletion, we were alerted of a Zone.deleted event at 8:47 PM. The on-call engineer saw the alert, confirmed it wasn’t an external breach, and notified the team.
- Change Tracking & Troubleshooting
- A quick filter for DNSRecord.deleted revealed every MX deletion entry, complete with hostname, priority, and TTL. The team copied the JSON payload straight back into the DNS dashboard. Email was restored straight away.
- Compliance & Reporting
- During their upcoming quarterly audit, they’ll simply export those log entries to demonstrate exactly who did what, when, and how they remediated the issue.
Lost DNS Records? Here’s Your “Undo” Button
Q: How can I retrieve lost DNS records in Cloudflare?
Cloudflare doesn’t have a one-click “restore,” but every DNS Record / action is logged with full JSON.
- Step 1: Filter your Audit Logs for DNSRecord.deleted (or the specific record type).
- Step 2: Copy the recorded JSON (name, type, content, ttl, etc.).
- Step 3: Re-create the record in the UI or via API using that data.
Q: Can I restore DNS entries removed in Cloudflare?
Yes, using the Audit Log as your backup. Because the log captures the exact payload, you don’t need a prior export.
Q: How do I track every DNS change in my account?
- Ingest Audit Logs into your logging pipeline.
- Alert on any DNS Record or Zone events.
- Filter by user, IP, or event, so you can always answer “who changed what, when, and from where?”
Q: How long are Cloudflare’s audit logs retained for?
- Cloudflare’s audit logs are retained for 18 months. While standard retention is 18 months, Cloudflare’s Enterprise plans can utilize Logpush to store audit logs for longer periods.
Q: Can I download Cloudflare’s audit logs?
- Yes, you can download Cloudflare’s audit logs. You can access and download them through the Cloudflare dashboard as a CSV or by using the Cloudflare API.
Why You’ll Love Audit Logs
- Spot mistakes the moment they happen. No more “Did someone delete that MX?” mysteries.
- Respond in seconds. Copy-paste the JSON, hit “save,” and you’re back in business.
- Demonstrate controls instantly. Hand over a timestamped log extract to auditors: boom!… proof of your change-management process.
Final thought: Mistakes happen (especially on a busy Monday evening!)…but with Cloudflare’s Audit Logs as your trusty sidekick, you can always see the misstep, undo the damage, and report with confidence.
If you’re not yet leveraging these and other powerful Cloudflare tools, reach out and we’ll help you set them up and optimize your environment for peak performance.
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