Why Log Management is Becoming Critical to Operational Success

As IT assets and massive volumes of log data continue to increase in number and sophistication, log management becomes ever more critical to operational success. Lennart Koopmann, founder & chief technology officer, Graylog, explains how organizations can optimize their log management approach to meet business needs.

Asset logs offer tremendous insight into the entire IT infrastructure and data at many levels: not just into systems and applications but also into operational domains like security, service management, and ultimately, holistic, end-to-end business performance. 

Furthermore, logs also quantify matters not just in the immediate present but backward in time as far as the organization cares to look. By detecting and correlating patterns that cropped up in the past, it’s often possible to anticipate future problems and prepare for them more effectively. In some cases, you can prevent catastrophic issues before they happen.

No two organizations have identical IT infrastructures. Furthermore, business strategies, needs, and goals will always vary. That said, all organizations land somewhere on the continuum of log management maturity, even if it is “we don’t collect logs.” 

By evaluating your organization against that continuum, you can get a clearer idea of developing or improving a log management strategy and enjoying all the many benefits that will accrue as a result. 

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The Continuum of Log Management Maturity

A surprising number of organizations do not collect log data. If you’re here, you need to hop on the continuum by collecting log data. 

Stage 1: No Alignment Between Asset Logs and Business Strategies

You want to collect all of your logs, but then be smart about how long you keep them and what you do with them. Let’s say you have Windows authentication logs that have a lot of value. These are usually low volume compared to firewall logs, which generally don’t have a lot of weight, but you still want to keep them.

To get value out of the logs you are collecting, you need to create and implement a log management strategy of some type, assign at least one team member to administer the strategy, and then as an initial step, apply the results to security. 

Stage 2: Preliminary Log Collection and Centralization 

Here you want to acquire and deploy a specific log management solution, train at least one IT team member in its use, and then consider how to leverage the solution across different domains. 

Stage 3: Search-driven Log Management via a Dedicated Solution 

To get value out of log management, every company should configure, enhance, or extend the log management solution to give the IT team only the information they need in the best format for them. You want to exclude the noise — i.e., the information they don’t need or won’t use. 

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Stage 4: Normalization/Parsing Log Data

Now you can start to see the business benefits of log management. Almost everyone in the organization can access, search and analyze the logs in a reliable, repeatable, and affordable way. This stage is when you should document capabilities, techniques, and best practices for leveraging log management. 

You’ll want to make sure that multiple people are familiar with the solution and how it’s used and tie product capabilities and dashboards to key business goals, such as the terms of service level agreements (SLAs) or government regulation requirements, as closely as possible.

Stage 5: Enrichment 

With limited automation, you can accelerate the responsiveness to business problems and agility in implementing new ideas. By implementing comprehensive cross-system integration and automation, you can derive the maximum value from asset logs as quickly and routinely as possible. 

Stage 6: Comprehensive Automation/Integration 

The final stage of the log management continuum requires you to check many different boxes and ask several questions. Do you have a proactive solution that anticipates future problems and informs new strategies to prevent them and reduce their business impact to zero (ideally)? On the flip side, is it reactive enough to address problems fast? Your automation and integration will have reached an advanced phase as well. 

Beyond classic IT domains such as security, you have now integrated log management with the heart of business functionality, such as enterprise resource planning and customer response management. And instead of ad hoc integration with other systems based on scripts, log management is often integrated formally via an application programming interface (API).  This approach is more powerful and more flexible than scripting and can be extended or customized in endless ways using a standard programming language such as C++ or Java.

Organizationally, you will have multiple teams making regular use of the solution. One will serve as a core team that primarily focuses on the tool, while other teams leverage the tool for reasons and in ways that reflect their particular contexts and needs. For example, some organizations use log management dashboards for technical support. If something unusual such as a complex dashboard is required, the core team can advise or create it.  

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The Log Management Continuum is Flexible

Realistically, your log data will always be somewhere between stages three and six. The business will dictate what is important. You have to decide what are the important logs for your organization. If you have to meet HIPAA requirements, then you must maintain your logs over time. In this case, you want to be at Stage Six where you have an automated process that keeps everything. It all depends on the source, the importance of the log data, and the amount of time and money you want to invest. The most important thing to remember to be successful is to at least get to Stage 3. 

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