It takes over 200 days before a breach is detected studies shows, and such breaches are detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.
There is a huge lack of logging and monitoring in the world today. It’s part of the reason why companies fail to deal with security breaches effectively.
Organizations need to be equipped by logging all of their important activities as it becomes difficult to track down malicious activities and to get the full scope of what is happening in the network.
Log monitoring can be divided into 3:
- Collection.
- Management.
- Monitoring and analysis.
Log monitoring is considered important for the following reason:
- Downtime prevention.
- Proof of malicious activity.
- Historical records for versioning.
Failing to keep a log and poor monitoring practices can introduce a human element to security risks. Often threat actors count on a lack of monitoring so that they can carry out their attacks before you have time to notice or react.
Best practices and prevention steps include:
- Log backups.
- Check logging levels.
- Automation and alerting.
- Ensure log levels and retention time are sufficient.
- Centralized log collection.
- Alerting capabilities should be enabled.
- Have an incident response and recovery plans.
Establishing effective logging and monitoring practices is essential.