Log and Event Analysis
Alfred Basta, Nadine Basta, Waqar Anwar, Mohammad Ilyas Essar · 2024
Log and event analysis form a crucial pillar of modern security operations center (SOC) functions. By centralized collection and monitoring of log data from endpoints, networks, and applications, SOCs gain visibility into potential security issues across the enterprise infrastructure. Effective log collection, storage, and management are crucial capabilities for SOCs to enable comprehensive visibility, efficient investigations, and compliance. Beyond basic alerting and reporting, leading SOCs extract richer insights from expanding log quantities using advanced analytical techniques. Machine learning and statistical analysis empower the detection of both known and unknown threats from log-extracted events. Dimensionality reduction represents data relationships in fewer variables for clustering similar events. Anomaly scores evaluate events for deviation from expected baselines. As critical infrastructure and core evidence, robust controls safeguard log data credibility. A diligent defense-in-depth methodology addresses persistent availability and integrity risks. Common challenges include data variability, identity context gaps, and restrictive extraction application programming interfaces.