Overcoming the Challenges of Log Management

If you are a developer, system administrator or a member of your organization’s IT security team, then you understand the benefit of logging. Without it, developers would find it hard to identify the problems in their written code during and after application development.

System administrators are tasked with ensuring that IT systems and infrastructure are running as expected. They use logs to detect suspicious activities, malfunctioning drives and so on.

Furthermore, IT security is a significant component that relies on logs to identify unauthorized access and other intrusions as well as malware activities that are usually a threat to any organization.

Today, DevOps and similar teams usually take the general role of development, operation and IT security which require centralized log management.

Challenges of Centralized Log Management

Unlike in the past, logs are no longer limited to troubleshooting problems. Nowadays, they also provide data for monitoring of IT environments, performance optimization, monitoring user actions and identifying suspicious activity.

With the increasing number of devices, hosts, events, log content and subsequently log formats, log generation and storage can be a hard task. Since logs also contain system and network security records, it is a challenge to protect them. Especially when they are archived for longer periods to ensure their confidentiality, integrity and availability whenever they are needed.

Logs are very important to any organization but only when they are analyzed proactively by efficient people using the right tools, especially a log management solution. These and many other challenges need to be addressed to ensure that you get everything right regarding your log management.

Dealing With the Challenges of Centralized Logging

Log Management

It is necessary to prioritize log management. Despite the fact that this highly depends on your organization’s requirements together with the need to reduce risks.

However, this will not go down well if there are no log management policies in place that allow for consistency. Additionally, these policies ensure that the existing laws and regulatory requirements are met and adhered to.

You also need a robust log management infrastructure that can handle the optimum volumes of log data in terms of generation, analysis, storage and monitoring.

The efficiency of your log management will depend highly on the competence of those who are tasked with log management responsibilities. This means that you will have to train and support your staff adequately by providing them with the right tools, technical assistance and documentation that they need to do their work.

So, Is Centralized Logging a Good Idea?

The sheer volume of log files alone especially in large IT departments that require centralized log management can be a daunting task to analyze. Luckily, log management tools can read and interpret the information in real-time plus they record the information to a database securely so that you can review them later.

Technology is all about automation. This is what centralized logging offers when reading and responding to information from your devices, firewalls, servers, security events, transactions, employee activity and so on.

Centralized log management offers a quick visualization of log analysis from different sources in a dashboard. It provides a deeper level of monitoring and collaboration for better insight.

IT security demands are evolving at the same rate as tech advancements. Regardless of the security risks that are emerging now, logging will continue to play an important role in IT security. For this reason, your organization should have the necessary infrastructure and expertise in order to identify and combat threats that come your way.

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