Governments, businesses, and society depend on reliable, functioning information and communication technology. However, increased severity of ransomware attacks and vulnerabilities in computer chips undermine these infrastructures. Further, as people adopt Internet of Things (IoT) devices, their inherent lack of security and ability to be aggregated into large, malicious bot networks increases these risks.

Many organizations today have strict data privacy regulations that they must comply with. These privacy regulations can often clash with the requirements of security, application and operations teams who need detailed log information. At Graylog, many of the organizations who use our tool are logging sensitive data that may contain personally identifiable information, health related data or financial data.

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) seeks to help secure the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) supply chain by requiring contractors and subcontractors to standardize their security controls. With CMMC 2.0, the Office of the Under Secretary of the Defense Acquisition and Sustainment (OUSD(A&S)) designated National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-171 as the foundation of the framework.

Adoption of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications means navigating the Shared Responsibility Model. Under the Shared Responsibility Model, the cloud services provider takes care of the infrastructure’s security, but you need to secure what happens within that environment. According to the State of Cloud Native Security Report, 50% of companies surveyed reported that maintaining comprehensive security remained a challenge.

Whether you are planning to use Graylog for security and threat hunting, IT Operations analysis and reporting, or any other use case, getting your logs into Graylog is essential. The process of log collection is sometimes a daunting task, especially if you are planning to collect massive amounts of data. But if you take a minute to answer some key questions before you begin, you can transform the log collection task from daunting to smooth sailing. Here we go with the questions…

Today’s reality is that you’ll never be 100% secure. Remote work and digital transformation add more access points, devices, and applications than ever before. At the same time, your team is constantly responding to alerts that could be an incident. Although, most often, it’s not. Basically, you need to reduce the mean time to investigate (MTTI) and the mean time to respond (MTTR).

Log management maturity and cybersecurity maturity often mirror one another. In today’s highly connected world, companies need to live with risk. Organizations need to balance the risks they’re willing to accept and compare that to the amount of money they’re willing to spend. Centralized log management is often a way to get the security monitoring that you need. As you mature your log management strategy, you’ll often find that you mature your security posture as well.

Security hygiene is the process of reviewing your current cybersecurity posture and implementing security controls that mitigate data breach risks. As you mature your security hygiene, you create a centralized log management strategy that defines a path to a more robust posture. As part of this, you need to accommodate for the way threats evolve, including those unique to your specific industry or business.

Protecting data is more mission-critical to businesses than ever before. Nearly every business process is tied to data, meaning that security teams need to streamline their monitoring, detection, and investigation processes. Centralized log management gives security teams the resources they need when they need them. Understanding how to use your log management solution for security monitoring can help you successfully mitigate risk and reduce cost.

Everything that makes employees’ lives easier, makes yours harder. Detecting insider threats — both employees and cybercriminals pretending to be employees — has never been more difficult or more important. The cloud technologies that make everyone else more efficient make security less efficient. They’re noisy. They send a lot of alerts. You’re tired. You’re overworked. You’re overloaded.