The Five Key Components for Meeting Compliance
Windows domain controllers, critical servers and databases are the cornerstones of every company infrastructure. Auditing and monitoring activity on these systems can be a challenging affair. Log management, monitoring, and reporting of activity, through event log data, is absolutely required to increase enterprise security and achieve compliance mandates.
Compliance with mandated regulations, in the areas of enterprise log management and data security, includes monitoring activity across all areas of the enterprise. This means all customer private data, company intellectual property assets, and all user activity. Having a solid security audit policy can be the centerpiece of every compliance playbook. Being able to enforce the security policy is even more valuable.
The LogClarity® Enterprise Solution automate many manual tasks to assist organizations in achieve and maintain compliance with SOX, PCI, FISMA, HIPAA, GLBA and many other audit requirements. LogClarity® can also assist organizations with retrieving data for an eDiscovery case because LogClarity® gathers log data from the entire enterprise, including databases.
- Log Management, Retention, & Audit Record Integrity
- Information Asset Monitoring & Protection
- Incident Management & Alerting
- Forensics Analysis & Data Mining
- Reporting and Remediation
These five key components provide a high level overview of what needs to be considered when looking to achieve a successful automated data security enforcement policy using enterprise log management.
1: Log Management, Retention, & Log Integrity
Centralized log collection from all infrastructure log sources;
aggregation and normalization of event logs into a readable searchable format; archival and integrity protection of event logs for a minimum of one year.
NOTE: Some legislative mandates require a much longer period.
The LogClarity® Enterprise Solution is designed to overcome all of the manual challenges related to event log management, which is a crucial part of passing internal and external audits. LogClarity® provides central management and normalization of all event logs including the events from firewalls, devices, databases, and Windows servers.
2. Information Asset Monitoring & Protection
Auditing and monitoring access to customer private data. Auditing and monitoring access to intellectual property.
Identifying and securing intellectual assets such as customer data or proprietary company assets is critical to security and compliance. Assets can be protected more effectively, if stakeholders are aware of their location(s). Incidents can also be determined more expediently, if assets are stored in fewer secure areas. It is highly recommended to conduct a data asset assessment all intellectual property.
Monitoring Customer Private Information Inside Databases
LogClarity® Database Edition contains a technology called Database Access Tracking (DAT) technology. DAT is specifically designed to capture and collect, all SQL queries made towards critical database tables. LogClarity’s DAT technology gives customers the ability to monitor all access to critical database tables made via business applications over the wire.
3. Incident Management & Alerting
Real-time alerting based on known threats, tied with effective response measures is a crucial element of compliance.
Incidents come with the territory for security teams worldwide. However, reducing damage and mitigating risk is the goal of every security professional. LogClarity® provides an Incident Management Console that enables network security teams to directly respond to security threats and policy infractions.
4. Forensic Analysis & Data Mining
Event log search capabilities are necessary to investigate unauthorized activity or breaches in security across the enterprise.
There are many reasons why security personnel or administrators may want to dig into event logs. In some cases, they may need to do it for security reasons. In other cases, it may be necessary for troubleshooting purposes. Many compliance requirements state that event logs must be reviewed, periodically as well. The information within the event logs is vital in determining when, how, or what specific activity has occurred.
5. Reporting & Remediation
Compliance Reporting of event log data across all systems, devices, and databases is required by every compliance mandate.
Incident remediation also needs to be achieved within a reasonable amount of time after incidents have been determined.
Reporting is a standard requirement for every company that has to meet compliance initiatives. Reporting can also help organizations achieve true accountability of their employees. The security of any enterprise is heavily reliant on accurate and detailed event log reporting.