5 Ways Event Log Management Makes You More Secure

While there are a ton of great reasons for you to implement event log monitoring in your environment, you really want to take a look at the security benefits event log management can offer you and your systems. Your logs contain a wealth of information that is worthless if no one is reviewing it. Here’s how event log management makes you more secure.
1.    Centralized logging makes it possible to review all the logs
If you have more servers than you can count without taking off your shoes, you have too many to manage by hand. There’s no way you will have the time to review the logs on all those servers, so the best you can do is parse logs after something occurs. If that’s how you do things, you’re doing it wrong. Event log monitoring enables you to centrally store logs from a variety of systems and formats, and process that data automatically.
2.    SIEM is French for “locked down”
Actually, SIEM is an acronym for Security Information and Event Monitoring, and it’s a specialized part of event log monitoring focused on security-related events, like AAA, privilege use, object access, etc. Basically all the things that go into figuring out who did what, who tried what and what failed. All the things you care about when a security incident happens.
3.    Event correlation helps you find bad things
Of course if there’s one thing better than figuring out what happened, it’s preventing it from happening in the first place. Event log monitoring enables you to correlate events that can be early indicators of bad behaviors, so you can head them off before they evolve into a security incident.
4.    Search and destroy
Well, search anyway. You don’t want to destroy anything unless it’s a piece of code trying to crack passwords or probe your network. Event log monitoring lets you easily and precisely search for just those events you need to find so you can move quickly on to fixing issues.
5.    Compliance, covered
With all the regulations, rules and laws shaping how we do our jobs, it’s nice to know that event log monitoring can cover many of the requirements around logging and the review of those logs – ensuring not only that things really are being checked out, but proving it to meet all the requirements those auditors and legislators can throw our way.
That’s it in a nutshell. Event log monitoring makes possible what otherwise isn’t; handling the incredible volume of logs in dozens of formats to identify, alert and react to anything that touches upon security.
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. Find out more on how you can benefit from GFI’s EventsManager.