Understanding log monitoring:
Benefits, use cases, challenges, tools and techniques
- What is log monitoring?
- Log monitoring use cases
- Challenges in log monitoring
- Log monitoring best practices
- Choosing the right log monitoring tool: A quick guide
- Log monitoring with ManageEngine
- Next steps
What is log monitoring?
Log monitoring involves the continuous observation and analysis of log data from network systems to proactively identify and resolve IT issues before they affect business operations.
The log monitoring process is a crucial part of observability, security, and enterprise IT management systems. It facilitates a centralized approach to detecting security threats, troubleshooting operational and performance issues, and optimizing network performance.
In this article, we will delve into the various types of log monitoring, the benefits of integrating it into IT management, the challenges involved, and best practices. Additionally, we will provide guidance on selecting an appropriate log monitoring tool to meet your specific needs.
Log monitoring use cases
Logs are typically generated by all the hardware and software in a network. Interactions with devices or applications are recorded as logs, which come in various formats. Many devices and applications include built-in tools to facilitate log monitoring for troubleshooting purposes.
However, to optimize network performance and ensure security, administrators need to consolidate log data from multiple sources across the network for centralized analysis. Depending on the source of the logs and their intended purpose, log monitoring can address a wide range of use cases across different business functions.
Application health and performance monitoring
Monitoring logs often helps IT admins track application performance and identify issues that affect the user experience. Logs contain information that helps in tracing application health and performance metrics, including error rates, response times, throughput, CPU and memory usage, disk I/O, network latency, uptime and availability, service failures and restarts, and connecting times.
Effective log monitoring tools help admins constantly monitor log trends, view these metrics in the forms of intuitive reports and dashboards, set up threshold-based alerts for instantly detecting issues, and identify performance bottlenecks. Monitoring web server applications aids in enhancing the online application user experience, detecting traffic surges, identifying malicious intrusion attempts, and expediting issue resolution. View and monitor all your application logs on a centralized server. Try ManageEngine EventLog Analyzer's free, 30-day trial.
Download it nowSystem troubleshooting
Workstations, servers, and other systems in a network record critical events, such as shutdowns, restarts, critical errors, and configuration changes, in logs. They usually come with built-in tools or command-line interfaces for searching through and monitoring logs. These tools help you search for and analyze the issues within your systems.
However, centralized log monitoring tools enhance your ability to analyze log trends across your network and correlate these logs with other events, helping you identify bottlenecks and performance issues. These tools capture issues at the network level; for example, they can detect frequent system restarts through threshold-based alerts and can identify unexpected critical server shutdowns caused by malicious processes through correlation.
Audit trails
Audit trails are a critical use case of log monitoring, providing secure, detailed records of all system activities. Log monitoring tools centralize log data and facilitate tracking who did what, where, and when, enhancing accountability and transparency. These tools are essential for ensuring compliance with regulations, identifying and investigating suspicious activities, and maintaining operational integrity.
Effective log monitoring tools offer real-time insights and help organizations safeguard their data and operations. They also offer file integrity monitoring capabilities for tracking changes to files and folders containing sensitive data. This helps you ensure data security and integrity.
Threat detection
Log monitoring tools play a crucial role in threat detection by continuously analyzing log data to identify suspicious activities and potential security breaches. Log monitoring tools and SIEM solutions come with real-time log correlation and behavior analytics modules that detect unauthorized access attempts, unusual patterns, and anomalies that could be security threats. Upon detecting security threats, a log monitoring tool sends you real-time notifications to facilitate immediately responding to and mitigating potential threats.
Suggested reading: Check out ManageEngine EventLog Analyzer's correlation rule library for effective threat detection practices.
Cloud log monitoring
Modern log monitoring practices offer comprehensive visibility into cloud infrastructures and applications. Today's log monitoring tools continuously collect, analyze, and visualize log data from various cloud services, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, to detect anomalies, troubleshoot issues, and ensure data integrity. This proactive approach helps you identify potential security threats, gain visibility into cloud activities, optimize performance, and maintain the overall health of your cloud environments.
Challenges in log monitoring
Log monitoring challenges range from data overload to real-time analysis. Navigating these complexities can be daunting and requires a combination of advanced technologies (such as AI), strategic planning, and continuous improvement to ensure effective log monitoring. Listed below are some common log monitoring challenges as well as tips to overcome them:
Translating data into insights
Logs generate vast amounts of raw data, which can be difficult to interpret. The challenge lies in translating the log data into actionable insights to address your use cases. Effective log monitoring requires advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms to detect specific patterns and anomalies. Enterprises should look to deploy a log monitoring tool with a scalable architecture, advanced analytics, and AI capabilities to derive meaningful conclusions from their log data.
A deluge of log data
The scale of log data generated by a network is extremely unpredictable and overwhelming. This data deluge can make it challenging to process and analyze logs in real time. Enterprises should look for scalable infrastructures and robust data management strategies, such as adopting distributed architecture to handle the influx of data without compromising performance.
Data storage
Storing large volumes of log data over extended time periods is costly. However, most compliance regulations, such as HIPAA, the PCI DSS, the GDPR, and the NIST CSF, mandate that organizations retain their logs for forensic analysis. Enterprises must balance the need for long-term storage with the costs and technical challenges associated with managing large datasets.
A multi-cloud environment
Managing the log monitoring process in a multi-cloud environment can be quite challenging due to the complexity of integrations, data inconsistency, security concerns, and costs. Different cloud providers have their own logging formats and security protocols, making it difficult to securely transmit and analyze the logs to gain insights.
Furthermore, ensuring that logs are consistent and synchronized across multiple platforms can be tricky. Differing time zones and logging standards often lead to inconsistencies during analysis. If you're facing this challenge, look for a log monitoring tool that uses effective normalization techniques and AI-based analytics for cloud log monitoring. Also, conduct frequent audits to ensure log consistency.
Log retention costs
Storing log data for a extended period of time can be costly, especially when compliance and regulatory requirements mandate long-term retention. Balancing the need for retaining log data with the associated storage costs is a critical challenge. Efficient data archiving solutions and tiered storage strategies can help you manage these expenses.
Cloud logging challenges
Cloud-based infrastructure adds complexity to log collection and management, necessitating new strategies for gathering logs from distributed systems. Traditional log collection methods may falter in cloud environments due to their inability to scale and adapt to the dynamic nature of cloud-based systems. To manage logs efficiently, you require cloud-native solutions.
Looking to solve log monitoring challenges?
Log monitoring best practices
To ensure consistent, secure, efficient log monitoring across diverse platforms, we recommend implementing the following log monitoring best practices:
Centralize logs
Use log monitoring software to centralize the collection, analysis, and storage of logs from all sources.
Adopt structured logging
Use structured log formats like JSON that make it easier to parse, search through, filter, and analyze logs. Look for a log monitoring tool with effective normalization and parsing techniques.
Use log levels
Implement different log levels—like error, warning, information, and debug—to categorize logs and prioritize analysis.
Adopt real-time monitoring
Implement a log monitoring tool with real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities to quickly detect and respond to issues.
Set optimal retention policies
Define and implement log retention policies in accordance with your compliance requirements to manage the storage and life cycle of log data. This also helps you manage storage costs.
Protect logs
Ensure you adopt proper encryption, hashing, timestamping, and access controls for logs to prevent unauthorized access and tampering. Often, log monitoring tools come with capabilities to ensure the integrity of the log data they store.
Prioritize correlation with context
Adopt, optimize, and regularly review correlation rules to correlate logs from different sources effectively. This helps you understand the context and impact of issues, making them easier to resolve.
Check out EventLog Analyzer, a comprehensive log monitoring tool with a centralized server, a correlation engine, real-time analysis, and cloud log storage capabilities.
Choosing the right log monitoring tool: A quick guide
Whether you're new to log monitoring or seeking a better solution, this guide will help you select the ideal tool.
Scalability
The log monitoring tool you choose should be able to handle the volume and complexity of your logs, both now and in the future.
Visualization and reporting
Out-of-the-box reports and intuitive dashboards should be included in the log monitoring solution you choose to help you understand complex data and gain actionable insights. Look for options to schedule reports and send them over email for efficient functioning.
Integrations and automations
Look for a tool that integrates seamlessly with your existing IT infrastructure and supports automations for routine tasks. An integration with your network monitoring tool or endpoint detection and response tool is essential to give you comprehensive security visibility. If the log monitoring tool you choose can integrate with your help desk, this will facilitate streamlining incident handling and troubleshooting.
Data ingestion
Ensure the log monitoring software can efficiently ingest logs from various sources, including servers, applications, and network devices.
Search and analysis capabilities
The log monitoring solution should provide robust search and analysis features for identifying and investigating relevant events quickly.
Security and compliance
The tool should have strong security features to protect sensitive data and help you meet compliance requirements.
The cost and ROI
Evaluate the total cost of ownership, including licensing, maintenance, and support costs. Consider the potential ROI in terms of improved efficiency, reduced downtime, and enhanced security.
Log monitoring with ManageEngine
As a recognized leader in the market, EventLog Analyzer is a comprehensive log monitoring solution for businesses of all sizes and industries. This log monitoring tool comes with support for over 750 log sources, detailed reporting, real-time correlation and alerting, forensic analysis, and flexible log retention capabilities to meet the different needs of enterprises.
EventLog Analyzer is equipped for application performance monitoring, system troubleshooting, threat detection, and compliance management use cases.
How EventLog Analyzer differs from other log monitoring tools
- Ease of deployment—gets installed in minutes with auto-discovery and configuration capabilities to start monitoring within hours
- A free, 30-day trial with complete capabilities and technical assistance during evaluation
- A cloud-based log monitoring solution for enterprises that want to do away with hardware investments
- Support for distributed architecture for horizontal scaling and large log data inflows
- Out-of-the-box reports and alerts that address critical log monitoring use cases
- High customizability to meet specific log monitoring requirements
- Audit-ready report templates and compliance violation alerts for regulations like the PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOX, and the GDPR
- A real-time correlation engine with hundreds of prebuilt rules for detecting security threats effectively
- Integrations with help desk software like ServiceDesk Plus, ServiceNow, Jira, and Zendesk
Next steps
Interested in evaluating how EventLog Analyzer meets your log monitoring requirements?
Here's how businesses have adopted EventLog Analyzer as their log monitoring solution
How ManageEngine's EventLog Analyzer helped FMC by balancing security and efficiency
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Unsure about which log monitoring tool to choose? Look no further.
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You can also check out this brief video on the features of EventLog Analyzer.
Considering the options provided, you'll notice that each log management tool has its strengths. However, EventLog Analyzer stands out for its scalability and ease of use. Its affordability and customization options make it a preferred choice among users. With its stellar reputation and comprehensive features, EventLog Analyzer stands out as the top contender in the market.
In conclusion, choosing the ideal log management tool entails a thorough examination of each solution's strengths, complexities, user-friendliness, and cost-effectiveness, aligned with organizational requirements. By meticulously evaluating these factors, you can confidently select the most suitable log management tool that best fits your needs.
