Over the last few years, data monitoring has become a major focal point for businesses for two main reasons; the vast amount of data breaches and the data privacy disclosure laws. Data assets range from company intellectual property to customer private data.
Monitoring and alerting key stakeholders of unauthorized access to data assets, within large data centers, can be very difficult. It is challenging because assets are stored in a variety databases and file servers across the enterprise. In addition to the lack of centralization of data assets, logging of data access is extremely verbose and convoluted.
Data Theft Rising
Data theft has become a huge epidemic that is spreading all over the globe. These breaches are not just external attacks that organizations must defend against. In fact, according to Verizon’s 2008 Data Breach Report, CERT Insider Crime Research and the Ponemon Institute data breach studies, all report that insiders are the biggest threat towards critical data assets. Malicious insiders who are knowledgeable and determined to take confidential business information for future use, as well as sell customer private information for financial gain are huge risks.
Whether rogue techniques are used by insiders to pilfer data or outside hackers, organizations must log and monitor all user access to critical data assets for compliance and security purposes. Incident response measures and encryption measures are highly recommended when they are possible to implement.
What is at stake?
When it comes to data theft, there is more at stake than meeting compliance requirements. Loss of reputation and competitive advantage in the marketplace are also on the line. Dramatic costs from lawsuits, credit reporting services are all part of the equation. The potential negative outcomes are big motivating factors for implementing data monitoring solutions. Databases file shares and file servers can all be high profile targets for anyone looking to capitalize on an opportunity to access your customer’s private data.
LogClarity® Data Security Component
One of the major tasks that organization face when attempting to monitor data at the file-level is the volume of event logs that get generated by system auditing. This is a huge problem but, it is a necessary evil for being able to determine access to critical data. In fact, logging and monitoring “data access” is part of common security policies and most compliance mandates. Because information assets are at stake for organizations worldwide, the Log Fidelity development team has spent extensive research intofile access logging.
The LogClarity® Data Security Component is designed to filter out the duplicate logs and correlate related logs to provide a realistic audit trail of data access activity. As mentioned previously, the native logs are extremely convoluted and redundant which can overwhelm any given system if enabled haphazardly. Although file access auditing is very low-level, the LogClarity® Data Security Component was developed to cut through the useless event logs and produce an easy to understand audit trail of activity.
The Technology Underneath the Hood
The LogClarity® Data Security Component utilizes File Access Log Translation (FALT) technology which performs proprietary analysis of the file (object) Access event logs in real-time. FALT determines the duplicate events from the authentic events, and filters out all duplicate and redundant events. LogClarity® simultaneously correlates multiple event logs together that are clearly related to the actions being performed. LogClarity® then normalizes the eventDescription Fieldsinto a simple-to-understand format.
LogClarity® Data Security Component Features:
- Filtration of Duplicate File Access Events
- Translation of File Access Event Description Fields
- Correlation of Related File Access Events
- Normalizes of All File Access Events
The LogClarity® Data Security Component was developed to tackle the challenges of monitoring critical data assets that are stored across the enterprise. The LogClarity® Data Security Component is another example of how the LogClarity® Enterprise Solution is a perfect collaboration of intertwined features. The power of the LogClarity® Data Security Component is that it can automatically translate and correlate File Access events into understandable actions without user intervention.
The LogClarity® Data Security Component is an essential part of the LogClarity® Enterprise Solution because it increases server and data security. Protecting critical information assets on servers and databases are a significant piece the overall compliance picture. The LogClarity® Database Activity Monitoring Component is a perfect complimentary solution to the Data Security Component because it provides data monitoring and security capabilities for commercial databases. Every organization needs to monitor and protect their enterprise from internal espionage or external hackers.
LogClarity® provides excellent incident management and response measures, powerful forensics and accurate reporting across the entire enterprise.
