Tracking and recording all data across a complex environment is more important than ever. From a user logging into the dashboard to database queries, JavaScript errors, and website traffic, event logs record them and give you time-stamped documentation. With so much data, log management is your new best friend. Finding a log analysis tool that’s scalable, flexible, and responsive is the key to getting the data you need when you need it.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR NEEDS
A log analysis tool, like Graylog, collects, aggregates, and correlates event log data for better monitoring across a complex environment.
You can use log analysis tools in various ways because they give you everything you need to know about what’s happening across:
- Users
- Devices
- Networks
- Applications
You can use log analysis to derive informative metrics that help analysts understand what happened in a system, monitor its activities, and optimize its performance.
You can make more informed decisions when choosing your log analysis tool if you know your needs.
A LOG ANALYSIS SOLUTION FOR EVERY TYPE OF USE CASE
To know which specific log analysis tool to choose, you must first understand the unique needs of your enterprise. What is your company’s use case?
- Security – Identify all threats in the blink of an eye
- Compliance & Audit – Cost-effectively store all your logs and quickly respond to all queries
- IT Operations – Keep your error logs and your entire infrastructure close at hand
- DevOps – Use responsive log management to work in cloud and elastic environments
LOG ANALYSIS FOR DEVOPS
Developers can use log files to search for bugs by helping them spot unknown or hidden errors. This helps them understand the reasons for potential crashes.
If your developers need to use log analysis, they need something with lightning-fast speed, so they don’t spend a ton of time scouring through huge amounts of plain text log files. Log management tools to help them find the bug and squash it ASAP.
LOG ANALYSIS FOR SECURITY
Since logs contain all the data you need, log analysis tools can be used for security, too. You’re already collecting the data. You can now use those same event logs to help generate searches that give you high-fidelity alerts to detect and respond to security incidents.
Log analysis tools are also a terrific weapon in the arsenal of any security team since they allow for:
- safeguarding access to vulnerable data,
- monitoring IoT activity
- detecting and preventing fraud.
If you have a small IT team doing double-duty, log analysis can correlate events for better visibility. Logs can be centralized and analyzed from operating systems, applications, and networks through log analysis tools without learning a complex query language. If you’re already using a Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) tool, then your log analysis tool optimizes that technology.
LOG ANALYSIS FOR SAAS ENTERPRISES
If your enterprise is a software as a service (SaaS) business, your first and foremost priority is ensuring service and website availability. While service downtime is a serious threat for all online enterprises that you must avoid at all times, SaaS companies’ customers rely on these applications, and downtime can lead to:
- Customer churn
- Reputation risk
- Reduced revenue
- Business interruption
Log management software can help you:
- Test and troubleshoot updates before you roll them out.
- Check if the new features are correctly functional
- Spot and track errors proactively
SaaS organizations should look for a log analysis tool that is:
- Extremely agile
- Fast-reacting
- Provides real-time insights into server-side processes
- Includes a streamlined interface
LOG ANALYSIS FOR STARTUPS AND SMBS
Small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) and startups often have limited budgets, so having a scalable, flexible log analysis solution works well for them. As the organization – and IT budget – grow, their log management solution can grow with them.
Open-source software can be a great starting point but leaves you in charge of managing the tool. However, if you’re just getting started with log management, an open source solution with the ability to expand as your needs change is a good idea.
Cloud-based solutions are a little bit more expensive, but they can reduce infrastructure and operational costs in the long term.
Startups and SMBs should look for a solution that gives them the ability to:
- Reduce operating costs
- Optimize performance
- Monitor environment
- Resolve issues fast
- Use Dashboards for visibility
LOG ANALYSIS FOR ENTERPRISE
For large enterprise organizations, log analysis tools also provide value. Your systems can produce overwhelming volumes of data so that a log analysis tool can give you the visibility needed for rapid insights.
While the enterprise might be using a tool for log management, it might not have the one it needs. Some log management solutions require users to have skills around proprietary queries. This makes it more difficult to find the right team members for the organization.
Enterprise organizations should look for a solution that gives them the ability to:
- Use analytics and data visualization for instant insights
- Build queries in minutes or milliseconds
- Build complex alerts based on a relationship between multiple events or even missing events
- Chain queries together for threat hunting and root cause analysis
- Integrate with all technologies across the environment, including third-party apps
FINDING THE RIGHT LOG ANALYSIS TOOL FOR YOU
In a nutshell, although all log management tools can more or less cover all bases, they’re not all created equal. Each one has its unique features, merits, and flaws. So focus on what you really need before venturing into a labyrinth full of a myriad of different solutions.
