If someone asks me what the role of log management is, in one sentence, I would say that it is the practice that gives value and meaning to a company’s log data. The tools that help in this are called log management solutions. These tools collect, store, and analyze crucial data in a system or network.

Data is widely regarded as the most important resource today. True, but even in the past, data and its security were of paramount importance to empires. Consider a kingdom from the medieval period. The ministers and his personnel used to make logs on the production and procurement of food & other resources. They used to keep data of arms and ammunition that their armies had. All these data were crucial for the survival and security of the kingdom.

These paper logs were stored in locked vaults, sequenced in an ordered fashion, and protected from enemies. The kingdoms were well aware of the dangers of vital documents getting misplaced, destroyed, or mishandled. They also used to analyze old archived data for making battle or disaster strategies. 

In the 21st century, data is computerized and enormous. The information is generated, stored, and shared over an intricate network. Each event in a network generates data, which is recorded in a log. 

What is Log Management?

Operating systems, web browsers, workstations, firewalls, anti-malware, and IDS (intrusion detection systems), are only a few of the systems and software that generate logs. Log files are usually timestamped and can capture almost all the events that occur behind the curtains of digital systems. A log will record events like:

• Messages and transactions between different users.
• Account management events
• Login attempts
• System errors while running an application
• Directory service access

Organizations can’t expect to protect their infrastructure properly unless they have a clear view of what’s happening in their network. Log management solutions address this problem. 

Log management is a catch-all word for all the operations and processes that go into generating, collecting, centralizing, analyzing, transmitting, storing, archiving, and disposing of vast amounts of computer-generated log data.

Advantages of Log Management Solutions

System logging tools usually generate logs, but not all provide event log management. Companies can also consider using log monitoring and management tools from a third party for more benefits. There are many advantages of such custom log management solutions. Here, we’re going to discuss some of them.

Data Centralization

The ability to store logs in a centralized location is one of the key benefits of log management. Having all of your logs in one location has a couple of crucial benefits:

• It helps in taking quicker security actions as storing information at one location speeds up the process of threat identification and makes log data analysis much simpler.
• Getting centralized logging also involves having standardized log files, which saves time while searching for logs from various sources.

Advantal Technologies, exercised a proof-of-concept (POC) to test the feasibility of a centralized IP log management solution, which can handle dispersed data from various nodes in the network for a telecom company. The telecom company didn’t have a unified system for accessing logs from each node without having to access each one individually. 

In our POC, we devised a centralized mechanism for managing dispersed data from around one thousand nodes in a network. Such logging solutions bring focus and ease in network security, monitoring, and troubleshooting.

Security & Compliance

Network & Data Security

Log monitoring is critical to your data security strategy. You have significant gaps in the security of your network if you aren’t collecting, storing, and evaluating log data for every asset in your organization. The IT & networking teams become more reliable and competent with automated logging solutions. These tools do the collection, analysis, and correlation of data from various security systems and devices in the organization. 

Log management and monitoring mechanism gives valuable insight into what’s happening and has happened on the network. The clear visibility and insights from such tools help your organization to:

• Focus on critical & valuable network events.
• Take effective and prompt measures to resolve potential security threats before they become full-fledged cybersecurity incidents.
• Improve the overall effectiveness of the IT and network security departments across the board.

Stay Compliant 

Compliance requirements can also compel log management needs in an organization.  HIPAA, PCI, SOX, and other regulatory standards mandate that companies should monitor access to systems and networks containing regulated data (which necessitates specific privacy and security standards). 

Compliance aims to provide robust security that can be verified and monitored. They do this by establishing standards or regulations that mandate an organization to adhere to a certain degree of strict security procedures.

The compliance norms may include:

• Technical controls, like, log monitoring tools &  robust configuration control.
• Administrative controls, like, a comprehensive security policy, well-defined procedures, and timely & well-structured training.
• Log retention, archival, and disposal policies.

Certain well-developed logging tools are a cost-effective way to satisfy key regulatory compliance requirements. A good log management tool, like Syslog Server, will enable the organization to arrange automatic log archival, clean-ups, and scripts to ensure compliance with SOX, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and other regulations. Such tools will also include features for compression and encryption of log data.

Alerts and Monitoring Mechanisms

Log management solutions give real-time alerts that allow administrators to respond as soon as an issue occurs. In cases of data breach or intrusion, where delay will mean more harm to the system by the intruder, real-time warnings are critical. In other words, you’re going from a reactive to a proactive strategy. 

Another advantage of log reporting is that you can select from a variety of communications platforms to ensure you don’t skip any critical events.

However, the log management solution should have a customized filtering mechanism for a more successful alert mechanism. For instance, our IP Log Manager project consisted of an SFTP listener and filtering module:

• The SFTP listener collects SFTP log files from thousands of Network components and organizes them into a directory structure. 
• The filtering module has a mechanism for filtering and processing stored logs more conveniently. 

The admin can adjust these controls to only receive alerts for high-priority incidents. It ensures that the system/network admin team is not flooded with notifications, alerts, or text messages. Organizations can also use logging solutions to configure various sets of rules on collected logs to help admins in filtering so that they can focus on the most important messages. 

In short, log monitoring & alert systems serve as virtual outposts for the network or system, which keeps an eye on potential threats. If the outpost detects unusual behavior, they will ring bells, strike gongs, or shout to the soldiers (system admins) to warn them of the impending threats.

Issue Detection & Troubleshooting

Network troubleshooting is one of the most significant benefits of the problem detection ability of a log management tool.

Log management provides a greater understanding of the processes that occur on your workstations and peripherals, and also allows better control of your IT environment. Real-time warnings greatly reduce the time it takes to detect and resolve a problem; however, log data analytics is the area where log detection systems play the most crucial role in problem-solving and troubleshooting.

Log management solutions apply customized search and analysis on a vast amount of log data. It enables the admins to quickly investigate application-related matters, like:

• Reconstruction the timeline of troublesome incidents.
• Uncovering links with other events, and
• Assessing application health and troubleshooting
• Pinpointing the cause of the issue.
• Diagnosing and detecting the primary cause of installation and run-time errors

Data Analytics

Data analytics in log management solutions help in more than just troubleshooting and issue resolution. Companies realize that the data they store contains useful knowledge, thanks to the growth of data science. Data analytics entails several steps, including data cleansing and transformation, intending to create a data model that can:

• Predict specific behaviors,
• Assist in business decisions, or
• Provide new intelligence and insights.

Usually, log data provides a gold mine of industry insights. Log data can be used to extract critical business details, and warnings can be set up when specific business priorities or requirements are met. Furthermore, such solutions can analyze:

• The overall health of your business operations/processes,
• Transactional data (of subscribers and visitors),
• System metrics,
• Web traffic bottlenecks,
• Security vulnerabilities in the network, etc.

Log Data Parsing

Parsing is the practice of breaking massive quantities of data into smaller chunks for easier storage and management. Instead of just a lot of text with timestamps, a good log management solution would transform your logs into well-structured and meaningful data. 

Log data parsing can help in:

• Recognizing trends and intelligently analyzing data.
• Compiling data and applying unique commands and search queries.
• Providing in-depth analysis of performance across the networks.
• Troubleshooting and extracting actionable information is much quicker than with a log solution that does not parse the data.

Conclusion

Every information and digital action is captured in logs, whether it’s on our workstations, data repositories, or cloud servers. And it’s getting bigger day by day. As a result, putting in place a successful logging solution is more vital than ever.

Organizations would be in the dark about their network and server security if they didn’t have a robust log management solution. For example, they may be aware that something is wrong with their IT infrastructure but unable to pinpoint what it is, at least not without investing considerable time in the investigation. Specialized log management solutions save time, allowing admin teams to focus on more productive tasks.
Log management tools will help your organization stay ahead of potential issues, get a better view of what’s going on in your systems, enhance your network security, accelerate troubleshooting, and create superior measures for coping with frequent and unexpected issues.