Different Types of Security Logs for Cybersecurity

Because all significant data is saved in the cloud and all actions are carried out through the internet, cybersecurity is a critical factor for all enterprises nowadays. But, what exactly is cybersecurity's role? Is it only responsible for identifying and countering all security risks, or does it have the capability to do more?

 

Technology today is way more efficient than just doing that. Cybersecurity can include security logging and monitoring, which are both essential components of a well-maintained cybersecurity architecture. 

 

What is Security Logging?

 

The logging and monitoring of security events are two elements of a single process that is critical to the upkeep of safe infrastructure. Every action in your environment is a security event, from emails to logins to firewall changes. 

 

All of these events are (or should be) documented so that you can keep track of what's going on in your IT landscape.

 

Security event logging and monitoring can only be effective if it is integrated into a comprehensive data collecting and analysis process. Security logs can contain a large amount of information. There will be so much of it that a human eye will be unable to efficiently discern dangers within it.

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Advantages of security logging

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By monitoring various forms of data from the network, security information and event management (SIEM) systems provide a healthy security posture for an organization's network. 

 

Every action on the device, as well as apps over the network, is recorded in log data. SIEM systems must gather and analyze several types of log data in order to assess a network's security posture. Let us further learn about the types of security logs.

 

Aslo Read | What is Attack Surface Management?

 

 

7 Types of security logs:

 

There are seven types of security logs:

 

1. Security Logs:

 

Smart devices in a company's environment have become even more important to the business as enterprises move toward a cloud-first strategy. 

 

As workloads transition to cloud infrastructures, the firewalls and other security devices are processing an increasing amount of traffic. The logs on these security devices can provide a great deal of information, including blocked traffic, VPN health, intrusion detection, and prevention systems, and anomalous user behaviour, to name a few. 

 

These Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) logs might be the first line of defence in determining the scope of an attack or identifying a user experience abnormality. 

 

As mentioned by DNS stuff, SolarWinds Security Event Manager, for example, is designed to monitor event logs for any unusual activity, allowing you to respond to any attacks in real-time.

 

2. Endpoint Logs:

 

Attackers can access your network by successfully exploiting vulnerabilities in endpoint devices including laptops, mobile phones, and computer systems. Endpoint device logs (also known as endpoint logs) are critical for gathering data and detecting malicious behaviour.

 

Windows event logs, Linux event logs, iOS event logs, and Android event logs are just a few examples of operating system logs. A security professional may view event logs for all of the categories stated above using Event Viewer on a machine running the Windows operating system. An event's username, machine, source, type, date, and time are displayed in the Event Viewer.

 

A chronology of events relating to the kernel, server, and applications may be found for systems running the Linux operating system. For a Linux system, a SIEM solution must have the following data: user ID, login attempts, configuration changes, system utilities, security-related events, and any attempt to access data, programs, files, or networks as a minimum need.

 

3. IoT Logs:

 

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical objects that communicate with one another through the internet. Sensors, processors, and software are built into these devices to enable data gathering, processing, and transmission. Devices that make up an IoT system, like endpoints, produce logs.

 

Log data from IoT devices, according to Log360, gives insights into the working of hardware components such as microcontrollers, the device's firmware update requirements, and the flow of data in and out of the device. The storage location of log data from IoT systems is an important aspect of recording data. These devices don't have enough memory to save the logs. 

 

As a result, the logs must be transmitted to a centralized log management system, where they may be preserved for a long time. The logs are then analyzed by the SIEM system to troubleshoot faults and discover security concerns.

 

All of the above mentioned logs are typically routed to a centralized logging system, which correlates and analyses the data to offer a security overview of your network. Different formats, such as CSV, JSON, Key-Value Pair, and Common Event Format, are used to store and send logs.

 

4. Server Logs:

 

Server logs may provide a wealth of information about your environment's current condition. Windows and Linux servers produce logs regularly, which can help in understanding how and why systems behave the way they do. 

 

Within an operating system and its accompanying applications, there are hundreds of thousands of events that can occur. Knowing which log events are trivial and which demand rapid attention is a battlefield skill. Regardless, server logs should not be overlooked as a source of data.

 

Online server logs may appear to be a time-consuming task, but they are one of the greatest, if not the best, tools to learn about how end-users interact with the web domains. Every web engine, including IIS, Apache, Tomcat, Web Sphere, NGINX, and others, may provide some level of web server logging. 

 

Depending on the requirements, simply knowing when and from where people are visiting the site may be quite useful in determining the consumers' demands. Unfortunately, when businesses are designing their logging strategy, web server logs are a prevalent log category that is often disregarded.

 

5. Proxy logs:

 

Proxy servers are critical components of an organization's network because they provide anonymity, control access, and save bandwidth. Proxy logs can disclose useful information about usage statistics and endpoint user browsing activity because all web requests and answers transit via the proxy server.

 

We need to keep an eye on proxy logs to keep track of user activity and packet lengths. Using the proxy logs generated to analyze users' browsing activity might assist build a baseline of their behaviour. Any variation from the baseline might signal a data breach and the need for additional investigation. 

 

The length of packets transmitted through the proxy server may be monitored using proxy logs. A user sending or receiving packets of the same length regularly over a while, for example, may suggest a software update or reveal malware exchanging signals with control servers. (here)

 

6. SAN infrastructure logs:

 

Let us imagine a situation, if a server-side transceiver on a fibre switch loses communication, the data on that server is no longer available. In today's world, redundant channels are usually present to ensure that connectivity is maintained, but the scenario still applies in a multi-path system. 

 

Let's say you have four connections from your server to your SAN infrastructure, but three of them have failed due to a sequence of tragic occurrences over several months. This indicates that you have limited data transfer by 75%. 

 

Although you haven't experienced a failure in the classic sense because connectivity and data are still moving, is it any surprise that end customers are complaining about the performance? This is, in my view, one of the most underutilized log sources.

 

7. Hypervisors:

 

By balancing workloads and utilizing resources more efficiently, hypervisors can help us IT professionals do our jobs better. Hundreds, if not thousands, of workloads may now be executed concurrently on clusters. 

 

However, much of the effort that goes into hypervisors is done behind the scenes, and you never see the magician. 

 

The hypervisors are always juggling—allocating resources from one virtual machine to another, moving storage from one cluster node to another, shifting a whole virtual machine to another node—and it's a delicate balance. 

 

One of the greatest methods to understand what the hypervisors are doing while one isn't looking is to capture and monitor hypervisor logs.

 

To conclude, the IT sector relies heavily on log creation and analysis. It is up to the user to decide whether one or all of them should be used. 

 

Simply considering what sorts of monitoring or log analysis tools you'll need in the future will help you narrow down your options. In this post, we discussed seven distinct types of security logs that must be monitored and handled for any organization's security to improve.

Next Read | Introduction to Application Security