The main source of information for users looking to configure NXLog was the NXLog [EE/CE] Reference Manual until recently. The Reference Manual is mostly what it is called: a reference manual. While it does cover what the software is capable of, unfortunately it is hard to use when you are tasked with setting up NXLog for a particular use case.
NXLog users can benefit from a SANS course titled SEC555: SIEM with Tactical Analytics, the first vendor-neutral course of its kind.
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We are proud to announce the general availability of NXLog Enterprise Edition v3.0 which is a major step forward to enhance the features and reliability of our flagship product. Below is a list of highlights in the new major release.
A new input module (im_wseventing) can be used to collect forwarded events from Windows hosts. The Windows clients can be configured from Group Policy to send Windows EventLog using Windows Event Forwarding. NXLog already supported collecting Windows EventLog remotely in earlier versions over WMI and MSRPC but this new capability is a major step for secure data collection from Windows machines in agentless mode supporting both Kerberos and HTTPS data transfer. Moreover the new im_wseventing module is platform independent and works on GNU/Linux as well whereby a single NXLog server running on GNU/Linux can be used to collect all your event data in the enterprise including Syslog and Windows EventLog.
The Windows DNS service may not recreate the debug log file after rollover. If you get hit by the issue, make sure to use the C: drive for the debug log path.
The Windows DNS debug log contains information on DNS queries and activity that can be important to monitor and analyze to detect malicious traffic. This requires some configuration changes for the DNS service in order to enable debug logging. Here is a short description on how to enable debug logging for the DNS service on windows, this also applies to Windows 2008 and later. It is possible to specify the file and path name of the DNS debug log file as well as the maximum size of the file.
The NXLog Enterprise Edition offers both agentless and agent based log collection so it's possible to use it in both ways or even in mixed mode.
In most enterprise environments the common data sources are mainly Syslog, local log files (IIS, DNS, custom app logs) and Windows Eventlog. Let's take a look at how this event data can be collected with the agentless or the agent based method.
