Data logging and event monitoring have become essential to provide security and performance monitoring of business operations. However, the vast volume of logs generated can lead to significant challenges, including high costs and inefficiencies.
Many companies collect an excessive number of logs, often missing out on the most critical security-related events. The majority of these logs, known as log noise, offer little to no value to security analysts and can obstruct timely access to high-priority security events. This low ratio between high-value events and log noise can severely impact the effectiveness of security monitoring.
Moreover, the sheer volume of collected logs introduces substantial challenges in terms of data storage, retention, and maintenance. The complexity and expense of managing an end-to-end logging infrastructure can quickly escalate, making it crucial for businesses to find efficient solutions.
It’s all about quality, not quantity
So, how do you go about weeding out low-value events while ensuring that you keep the high-value ones? Are there any additional pros or cons to such an approach?
To achieve the goal of collecting mainly high-value events, you need to collaborate with the key stakeholders in your organization who will be using the logs. Establish a list of event types that are most critical to the security and performance of your business operations, keeping in mind that your organization may be legally responsible for collecting additional types of events in order to fulfill compliance mandates and auditing requirements.
After identifying these critical event types, work with your IT security team to document the attributes of these events so they can be programmatically identified and collected for future processing and analysis. For more details on this approach, see our white paper, How to develop a log collection strategy.
Regardless of your organization’s size, industry, or current logging infrastructure, NXLog Platform’s flexibility provides numerous ways to reduce log noise and volume, which can significantly reduce operational costs.
How NXLog Platform can help
There is practically no other log management solution capable of collecting logs from all operating systems and devices found in larger organizations, including multiple UNIX variants, Linux, Windows, macOS, along with various network-ready devices. NXLog Platform excels at filtering, aggregating, and either storing logs directly or sending them to almost any SIEM or endpoint of your choice.
NXLog Platform is a one-stop solution for log collection, processing, storage, visualization, and distribution. It doesn’t require you to install third-party plugins or different connectors each time you decide to use a different log source or third-party target system. Instead, NXLog Platform includes a growing collection of Solution Packs that greatly simplify and accelerate the integration of the most common log sources with your preferred SIEM.
Reducing SIEM and storage costs
The flexibility and comprehensive features of NXLog Platform help address SIEM licensing costs (which typically depend on the volume of ingested logs) and data storage costs.
- Trimming events and filtering logs
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NXLog Platform reduces event noise by trimming events and filtering logs. Trimming events refers to reducing log size by removing unwanted data, such as fields containing low-value information, and redundant or duplicated fields. Filtering allows excluding entire log events when they provide no valuable information or are duplicates. These techniques ensure that only high-value events needed by security analysts are sent to your SIEM, reducing the number of ingested events and lowering costs.
- Data compression
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Log data can be compressed during transmission or when writing logs to files. This reduces network bandwidth usage and reduces storage costs if the endpoints are writing log data to files.
- Efficient storage solutions
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By routing fewer logs to your SIEM and leveraging NXLog Platform’s out-of-the-box log storage for non-security or lower priority log data, you can significantly cut down on SIEM costs. Moreover, this eliminates the need for third-party products and avoids the extra integration and maintenance expenses.
Simplifying the logging stack
NXLog Platform lowers the complexity of your logging stack, leading to considerable budget and resource savings.
- Simple agent fleet management
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With NXLog Platform, you only need one agent software to handle all log collection, filtering, and processing tasks. This reduces the budgets and human resources required for integration and maintenance. Efficient agent fleet management capabilities further reduce costs associated with configuring and monitoring a large number of agents across your network and infrastructure.
- Comprehensive integrations
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NXLog Platform offers over 100 popular integrations with log sources and target systems out-of-the-box. This ensures a fast and streamlined deployment of the solution, thus helping save on integration efforts.
- Full observability solution
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NXLog Platform includes out-of-the-box storage and analytics solutions. This eliminates the need for extra third-party products along with the added burden of integrations and ongoing maintenance.
Conclusion
We explored how NXLog Platform helps businesses significantly cut down on the costs associated with log management while enhancing their security posture through efficient and effective log handling. The cost savings can be especially significant if your organization is currently sending all events unfiltered to a SIEM, as many of them charge by data volume ingested.
NXLog Platform’s rich set of features, including a modular and distributed architecture and seamless integration with a vast number of third-party solutions, make it a highly cost-effective choice for optimizing your logging infrastructure and ensuring robust security operations.
