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The Benefits of Log Monitoring
You want your business to be smart about cybersecurity. Traffic is always flowing through your networks, and you need to make sure that none of it is from hackers. Log monitoring is the observation of network activity both instantaneously and over time to develop and deploy good security response strategies.
The Importance of Monitoring Network Activities
Your network traffic is the lifeblood of your business. Like blood in your body, your IT networks carry resources from the places they are generated to the places where they can be stored and used.
Payment information, inventory data, employee hours, and more runs between network devices to make your business run. But if your data can course easily from device to device in your network, so can the operations of hackers.
Monitoring network activities to determine whether it is normal or malicious activity is paramount to network security. Because you could not hope to monitor each bit of traffic flashing across your network, automated systems to log data or metadata to measure against real time traffic assist in identifying unusual and possibly malicious traffic.
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Event Log Monitoring Benefits
Event log monitoring has both immediate and long term benefits for your cybersecurity. Keeping network traffic logs allows you to develop a concept of “normal” traffic, which may fluctuate at various times throughout the day or over longer periods. Monitoring logs allows you to detect potentially unauthorized traffic by comparing your overall traffic profile to this normal amount.
The thing about event log monitoring is the more data you have, the better your system can get at responding to threats. Think of network monitoring as an investment: the longer you buy in, the more you get out of it.
The more information your event log analyzer has, the better decisions your automated cybersecurity systems can make.
As you collect more log data, your network monitoring system can improve over time. You simply don’t use your networks the same all the time.
There will be periods of peak network activity during the day, throughout the week, and over the course of months and years. Your monitoring system should be able to adapt to these fluctuations by tracking logs to detect intrusions into your system.
What to Know About Log Monitoring Tools
Not all log monitoring tools are the same. Your industry and the size and scope of your business will affect what you need your monitoring software to do. The amount of traffic your network produces may also impact which log monitoring tool is right for you.
You will want a logging solution that can work with your existing infrastructure. Depending on how your network is set up, the number of devices, partitions, etc. can end up costing you more with certain software. Be sure to look into the pricing models to find the software that helps you economize.
There are many other options to consider. For instance whether you want a solution that lets you search and filter your network logs. Another common feature is the ability to visualize your network activity.
Ultimately, you will want to ensure that whatever software you choose is capable of doing all the things you need it to do within your budget. Certainly, this isn’t so simple a task for most organizations.
Logging as a Service
Unfortunately, simply having the right software is not enough to get the full benefits. There is a lot of technical know-how required to set up and run an effective monitoring system.
For businesses in sensitive industries, there may be standards to be complied with when it comes to event monitoring. Standards such as NIST, ISO, PCI, etc. not only require event log monitoring, but also the methods used to do so.
Many companies offer logging as a service for businesses that either don’t have an IT team, need assistance with compliance, or want their IT team to focus on other tasks. This allows businesses to outsource their log monitoring tasks to an outside company, so they can focus on growing their business.
With logging as a service, the task of installing and configuring your log monitoring software is handled for you. So too is traffic monitoring, which can be managed through a combination of automation and an active support team.
Choose Foresite for Log Monitoring
Our proprietary ProVision security software is an automated local network monitoring and threat response solution. In combination with our 24/7 security operations center, Foresite has your back day or night, weekends and holidays. Contact us today to get started.
Tristin Zeman
Tristin Zeman is the Digital Marketing Manager at Foresite. For the past 10 years, she has helped organizations of all sizes create and scale marketing programs through digital and traditional marketing channels and efficient marketing operations.
