The History of SIEM Tools and Their Integration with Log Storage

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and log management tools have been complementary for years. But now the technologies are expected to merge. This change will be able to help online business owners run an even more successful, more productive website thanks to analysis of data.

SIEM began as businesses and companies found themselves spending tons of money on Firewalls, Malware and other intrusion detection software. These systems were helpful in detecting external attacks; however,they were not always accurate since the information was generated from search engines.

SIEM technology was designed to reduce this “signal-to-noise ratio” to help show the most critical external viruses and threats. Using rule-based correlation, SIEM helps IT teams discover real attacks by focusing on a set of firewall and IPS events that are unwanted. Traditionally, SIEM solutions have been expensive and time-consuming to maintain. But they solve the big headache of sorting through excessive false alerts and effectively protect companies from external threats.

These updates with SIEM tools was another step in the right direction; however when the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) mandated stricter internal IT controls and assessment, it became harder for SIEM tools to monitor information and events.
To help improve SIEM tools to now comply with the PCI, professionals have integrated them with log storage tools. This merge not only detects external threats like viruses, but it also providesdaily reports and data logs of user activities and create forensics reports surrounding any given incident.

Though SIEM technologies already collected logs, they weren't designed to handle the sheer volume of log data generated from IT components such as applications, switches, routers, databases, firewalls, operating systems, IDS/IPS and web proxies.  Now that SIEM tools have integrated with Log Storage, this is all done with ease.

With this great integration of SIEM tools and Log Storage, data analyses are easier than ever. They can help your online businesses track needed data to increase traffic generation, block unwanted viruses, and overtime, increase your productivity.

The Basics of Log Storage

Log storage is created by web gateways that convert and format properties together while writing these results into a log file. When creating a customized log or modifying an existing log, it is important to understand the most efficient ways to do so because Log Storage is crucial to improving traffic generation which will in turn increase productivity and profits.

The basics of log storage can be broken down into two simple steps:

1.     1. Define the Log Line. When creating the user, the first step is to create the log entry. This is done by creating an event to “Set Property Value” à choose the “User Defined Log Line.” From here all that is needed is to decide is what properties to add to format the log in the best, most effective, applicable way to fit the needs of each individual business. Users can convert, join and format all the different properties so that their log storage has the desired look and feel. It is best to set this up in a way that will be easy to analyze and understand how to make the business more productive.

2.     2. Writing the user to create a Log File. When working with log storage files users will also want to send the log string to the file system logging engine. This is where their log data will be managed. These files use the user defined properties that have stored the string as a parameter to send the data to a specific file logging engine.

Now that the specific log data is defined and written correctly, users will be able to understand these log storage basics to better analyze all website data compiled in these log files.

With the information that found from the log storage, users now can and should analyze the information to determine what aspects can be improved upon to increase your traffic generation and productivity. The more business owners, individuals, marketing personnel and IT teams analyze and compile new data, the more targeted traffic they will be able to bring to their websites.