Logging and Log Management: The Authoritative Guide to Understanding the Concepts Surrounding Logging and Log Management

Kevin Schmidt · Chris Phillips · Anton Chuvakin

Dec 2012 · Newnes

About this ebook

Logging and Log Management: The Authoritative Guide to Understanding the Concepts Surrounding Logging and Log Management introduces information technology professionals to the basic concepts of logging and log management. It provides tools and techniques to analyze log data and detect malicious activity. The book consists of 22 chapters that cover the basics of log data; log data sources; log storage technologies; a case study on how syslog-ng is deployed in a real environment for log collection; covert logging; planning and preparing for the analysis log data; simple analysis techniques; and tools and techniques for reviewing logs for potential problems. The book also discusses statistical analysis; log data mining; visualizing log data; logging laws and logging mistakes; open source and commercial toolsets for log data collection and analysis; log management procedures; and attacks against logging systems. In addition, the book addresses logging for programmers; logging and compliance with regulations and policies; planning for log analysis system deployment; cloud logging; and the future of log standards, logging, and log analysis. This book was written for anyone interested in learning more about logging and log management. These include systems administrators, junior security engineers, application developers, and managers.

• Comprehensive coverage of log management including analysis, visualization, reporting and more
• Includes information on different uses for logs -- from system operations to regulatory compliance
• Features case Studies on syslog-ng and actual real-world situations where logs came in handy in incident response
• Provides practical guidance in the areas of report, log analysis system selection, planning a log analysis system and log data normalization and correlation

Ratings and reviews

It's really useful to have am up-to-date book about logging, with advice on best practice, compliance, and suggestions of products both open-source and proprietary, in-house and cloud. Unfortunately there are rather a lot of grammatical and spelling errors which at times detract from the readability.

About the author

Kevin J. Schmidt is a senior manager at Dell SecureWorks, Inc., an industry leading MSSP, which is part of Dell. He is responsible for the design and development of a major part of the company’s SIEM platform. This includes data acquisition, correlation and analysis of log data.Prior to SecureWorks, Kevin worked for Reflex Security where he worked on an IPS engine and anti-virus software. And prior to this he was a lead developer and architect at GuardedNet, Inc.,which built one of the industry’s first SIEM platforms. Kevin is also a commissioned officer in the United States Navy Reserve (USNR). Kevin has over 19 years of experience in software development and design, 11 of which have been in the network security space. He holds a B.Sc. in computer science.

Christopher Phillips is a manager and senior software developer at Dell SecureWorks, Inc. He is responsible for the design and development of the company's Threat Intelligence service platform. He also has responsibility for a team involved in integrating log and event information from many third party providers for customers to have their information analyzed by the Dell SecureWorks systems and security professionals. Prior to Dell SecureWorks, Christopher has worked for McKesson and Allscripts where he worked with clients on HIPAA compliance and security and integrating healthcare systems. Christopher has over 18 years of experience in software development and design. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science and an MBA.

Dr. Anton Chuvakin is a recognized security expert in the field of logmanagement and PCI DSS compliance. He is an author of the books "Security Warrior" and "PCICompliance" and has contributed to many others, while also publishing dozens of papers on log management, correlation, data analysis, PCI DSS, and security management. His blog(http://www.securitywarrior.org) is one of the most popular in the industry.Additionaly, Anton teaches classes and presents at many security conferences across the worldand he works on emerging security standards and serves on the advisory boards ofseveral security start-ups. Currently, Anton is developing his security consulting practice, focusing on logging and PCI DSS compliance for security vendors and Fortune 500 organizations.Anton earned his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University.