One of the side effects of today’s cyber security landscape is the overwhelming volume of data security teams must aggregate and parse. Lean security teams don’t have it any easier, and the problem is compounded if they must do it manually. Data and log management are essential for organizations to gain real-time transparency and visibility into security events.
XDR provider Cynet has offered up a new guide (read it here) that helps lean organizations understand the importance of centralized log management (CLM). The truth is that even the most well-stocked and staffed teams would have trouble manually handling their log management needs, which is why organizations are increasingly going the automated route.
On top of the efficiency of automation, CLM gives organizations much greater visibility into their environment and security events that impact them. However, the benefits of deploying CLM tools and reducing the level of human intervention in log management and analysis are much more than just reducing work hours.
Why CLM is critical for lean security teams
Logs are a natural part of IT management. Each time-stamped event record collected in a log is an important piece of the overall puzzle that is an organization’s security operation. This data can be a trail of breadcrumbs and indicators of compromise, which shows security teams what attackers are doing and attempting to do. However, when these logs are incomplete, improperly sorted, or simply not parsed, the picture becomes murkier and harder to glean.
CLM tools can help combat this lack of transparency in several ways. First, when there are more data points and logs that can be easily accessed and analyzed, organizations can build significantly better reconstructions of security incidents, different attack attempts, and breaches. Additionally, it helps for the future, as organizations can become better at detecting false positives and negatives, as well as missed detections. Finally, it reduces fatigue and wasted time, letting security teams focus on other key areas.
The new guide focuses on these topics, breaking down:
- The importance of accessing and analyzing log data. As mentioned above, simply having easy access to this data makes organizations better at detecting attacks and understanding previous incidents. More importantly, how data is stored also makes a difference, with data lakes a clear favorite.
- The four main approaches used to gain centralized log management. Organizations can take a few different paths to improving their log management capabilities, and each comes with its own benefits and drawbacks. Understanding which path to take can help organizations make smarter decisions.
- Why CLM is critical for security teams’ success. Log management is all about adding greater transparency into an organization’s security events, and handling it manually means organizations might lose out on a lot of key insights. CLM ensures this is not the case.
- The key benefits of a CLM solution. Building a CLM system from scratch is complex and not always feasible. Moreover, adding expensive tools that include advanced services and features just for CLM functionality isn’t worth it. A CLM solution is an excellent middle ground. CLM also assists with meeting regulatory compliance requirements, automating reports, and managing policy changes.
Learn more about how lean security teams can benefit from CLM here.