Server Log Management and Analysis
Run reports on server log files to prove compliance
Server log management can help you analyze internal security policies and demonstrate compliance with industry auditors. That’s why SolarWinds® Security Event Manager’s (SEM) server log management tool was built to generate over 200 standard and industry-specific reports, designed to help your team make better decisions about your organization's security practices.
Standard reports in SolarWinds SEM can be used to gather information on specific server events during a particular time period, while industry reports (HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, and more) can be generated to help your organization demonstrate compliance with industry auditors.
Users can also create custom reports on an ad hoc basis or save their favorite reports to the dashboard. Additionally, server log reports can be scheduled at a time of your choosing or be generated on-demand as needed.
Powerful server log analysis correlation
With SEM, users can decide which IT infrastructure components they want to monitor by selecting the proper agent and non-agent devices.
For server logs, simply select the server you want to monitor, and configure the agent to send server log events right to SEM. Since you can select multiple agents and non-agent devices, server logs can be parsed and viewed alongside other log data from your network, including logs from domain controllers, workstations, firewalls, routers, and switches.
With SEM closely tracking real-time changes in log data, you can define custom thresholds to trigger automated alerts or initiate automated responses like shutting down hazardous processes.
Robust server log analysis tools
Since logs are generated at a near-constant rate, keeping track of them all can be a serious challenge—but SEM is designed to make it easy to get the server log insights you need. Users can configure SEM to track server logs on the systems in their network to track errors, monitor events in real time, and more easily identify security threats before an incident occurs.
The SEM agent service is also built to collect and normalize server log data before sending to the SEM Manager using SSL/TLS encryptions and compression, which provides many benefits including helping ensure data integrity, minimizing bandwidth usage, and more.
What is server log management?
Server log management is the process of collecting, aggregating, centralizing, and analyzing log data from your network servers. Server logs are generated and stored automatically by your server over time. When these events occur, your server will add a line to its log. Usually, these logs are generated in the form of text files, and they hold tons of valuable information about the health and performance of your organization’s servers.
However, since these logs are stored in the form of unfiltered files, it can be hard to turn the raw data into actionable information, especially when it’s generated in large volumes around the clock. Server log management includes collecting and organizing server logs, so they can be viewed, monitored, and analyzed with ease.
How does server log management work?
Server log management involves collecting all the logs generated by your servers. This is especially important for large organizations running dozens of servers, which all produce and store log data in different locations.
By aggregating into a central location, it can be easier to begin sorting and analyzing server logs from devices across your infrastructure to gain helpful performance insights.
Why is server log management important?
Server log management can help turn raw log data about server activity into actionable information about security or performance issues. Server log files can be used to improve your data security and to optimize server and application performance.
By monitoring and analyzing real-time or historical server logs, you can better identify common patterns or trends indicative of an issue. With these insights, you can perform faster root cause analysis when an incident occurs. This information can also help you quickly identify and improve application or server performance issues, which can help prevent or minimize potential service interruptions before they occur.
What does server log management tool do?
Server log management tools can offer helpful automation and monitoring features. For example, these solutions can help users more easily sort through server logs to identify errors, potentially malicious traffic, and bad code. Others can help turn raw log data into a normalized and readable format, so users can more easily extract insights from them.
Patterns in server logs that may signal a security threat can also more easily emerge when using a server log management tool, as it can monitor for issues across network switches, routers, firewalls, operating systems, databases, and other security products and devices. By sending all logs to a centralized server to normalize critical fields that may be natively in different outputs and create searchable logical fields, you gain the ability to more easily identify potential security incidents and dependencies not easily visible when logs are located in separate sources.
Server log monitoring tasks can also be automated using a server log management tools, including the ability to configure rules to monitor and automatically respond to specific events. These automated responses can range from an email notification to active responses designed to address potential security threats in real time. Active responses include blocking IP addresses, detaching USB devices, and even performing use-based responses like adding, creating, disabling, or enabling users accounts.
How does server log management work in Security Event Manager?
SolarWinds Security Event Manager is built to serve as a robust, full-service security and compliance management software for organizations of all industries and sizes. With SEM, users can turn raw log data into useful information to help improve performance troubleshooting and cybersecurity efforts.
With the ability to detect suspicious activity and send automated notifications in real time, SolarWinds SEM is designed to help users monitor for and quickly address security threats with ease. SEM can provide automated alerts by SMS, email, or trigger Active Responses when certain correlations rules are met. The Active Responses in SEM are built to shut down processes or implement other actions if the tool detects specific threats.
With robust server log reporting features, SEM can help minimize the time it takes to prepare and demonstrate compliance with audit proven reports and tools for HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, and more. Reports can also be generated in preconfigured, standard, or customized formats. SEM also allows you to schedule these reports ahead at regular intervals, or they can be created and downloaded on an ad hoc basis.
- What is server log management?
- How does server log management work?
- Why is server log management important?
- What does server log management tool do?
- How does server log management work in Security Event Manager?
- Related Features and Tools
What is server log management?
Server log management is the process of collecting, aggregating, centralizing, and analyzing log data from your network servers. Server logs are generated and stored automatically by your server over time. When these events occur, your server will add a line to its log. Usually, these logs are generated in the form of text files, and they hold tons of valuable information about the health and performance of your organization’s servers.
However, since these logs are stored in the form of unfiltered files, it can be hard to turn the raw data into actionable information, especially when it’s generated in large volumes around the clock. Server log management includes collecting and organizing server logs, so they can be viewed, monitored, and analyzed with ease.
Server log management software to optimize your security
Security Event Manager
- Generate industry, standard, or custom reports.
- Monitor server log events around the clock to improve security practices.
- Correlate server logs alongside other log data for a holistic network view.
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