What is log aggregation and monitoring relation in cybersecurity?
02.09.2019
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Logs are the cornerstone in today’s cybersecurity monitoring, investigation, and forensics. According to a Fortune 500 report, an organization’s IT infrastructure can generate up to 10 Terabytes of log data per month. In this post, we will learn about log aggregation and monitoring; then analyze how they can help businesses to strength their cybersecurity posture.
Log Aggregation
Log Aggregation is performed to collect and aggregate different logs such as system logs, server logs, and firewall logs aims at organizing them and making them searchable. It is a good way to bring together all logs into a single location. However, your system (s) may include thousands of logs. If you need logs mere for cybersecurity purposes, aggregate only the security logs.
Log Monitoring
When it comes to logs in cybersecurity, Log Monitoring is another important consideration. In fact, log files contain very important information that can assist to find out patterns and problems in systems and network. Log monitoring, therefore, is the act of scanning log files, identifying patterns, or anomalous behavior. If anything suspicious is detected during this process, the log monitoring system raises an alert to notify security administration in the SOC. Log monitoring is an essential component of the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tool. However, separate tools also offer log monitoring.
Why log aggregation and log monitoring are critical in cybersecurity?
Log aggregation and log monitoring are two essential components of SIEM and they play a critical role in achieving an organization’s cybersecurity posture.
When malicious actors attack a system (s) and compromise data, they unintentionally leave behind evidence in the form of data artifacts, which is a piece of data that may or may not be relevant to the incident response or investigation. Examples of data artifacts may include timestamps, files, registry keys, or security logs. Data artifacts are very critical for forensic purposes. However, gathering relevant artifacts or logs are also essential. To this end, security analysts use log aggregation technique using a SIEM tool. As aforementioned, log aggregation collects all logs and artifacts at a central point. During this process, analysts have an opportunity to collect all relevant logs that may be helpful during the incident response process.
Once all logs and artifacts have been collected, the next step is to scan log files, find patterns, or any anomaly, or evidence of compromise through these logs. Here is log monitoring comes into place. The incident responders either use SIEM, which is undoubtedly a reliable solution for this purpose, or any third-party log monitoring tool. Upon successful detection, log monitoring system generates alert and notify SOC team to respond in no times.
In the absence of log aggregation and monitoring, even the most serious data breaches can be remained unnoticed or undetected. Logs and artifacts provide vital information about attackers and the attack as well, such as the timestamp when threat actors were carrying out nefarious practices on your system (s).
The Bottom Line
Are you looking forward to having log aggregation and monitoring as a part of your SOC? Fortunately, modern SIEM, such as that of Logsign, contains both these services in a single solution. Having a strong SIEM indicates that your organization is well protected against cyber-attacks.
