You know that event log monitoring is important, since all your systems and key applications log data. But since no two systems log to the same place, or in the same format, it's almost impossible to get ahead of the logging and actually pay attention to what is being logged. That's where event log monitoring comes into play; here's why:
- Aggregate your logs in a central location: With logs spread across dozens or even hundreds of systems, there's no way you can manage them where they are. Event log monitoring applications can gather up all your logs in a central location, making them easy to analyze, store, and manage.
- Perform security checks with SIEM: Regular security reviews are great, but they are reviews. They can only catch things that have already happened. Event log monitoring with Security Information and Events Monitoring (SIEM) can detect issues in real time, allowing you to respond before bad things happen.
- Work with multiple formats: One of the biggest challenges with manually parsing logs is the number of different formats that are out there, from syslog to SNMP traps, to IIS W3C logs and Windows events. Event log monitoring can deal with all of these and more, so you can focus on what happened, and let the app worry about in what format it was recorded.
- Perform searches across logs: With multiple systems involved, if you cannot search across logs, you cannot tie events together. Event log monitoring can search across all your logs to find what is happening across multiple systems.
- Correlate events: Event correlation is impossible manually, but is easy for event log monitoring applications to handle, connecting the dots between security logs on domain controllers, connection logs on VPN concentrators, file access logs on servers, etc.
- Meet compliance requirements: With so many regulations requiring not only that you log, but that you review and respond to events in logs, event log monitoring applications can automate the tasks that will help you to meet your compliance requirements. It's a very economical way to ensure you don't have an exception in your audit report.
Event log monitoring makes it easy for even a single admin to manage the logs across all the servers and applications in the environment, ensuring nothing is missed and that the admin has all the information at hand to address any requirement. Event log monitoring is the right approach to proactive management.
Note: This guest post was provided by Casper Manes on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. GFI is a leading software developer that provides a single source for network administrators to address their network security, content security and messaging needs. Discover what other benefits GFI's EventsManager can offer your organization. All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
