Why compliance audits?
Let us not narrow our perception to the IT systems alone…but with IT infrastructure as a broad term. Auditing has a purpose. Tracking activities within the systems is important for system security but most importantly, it is a priority for data security. Towards a secured IT data within an organization, auditing requires not just protection but assurance of continuous protection.
Auditing: Hard-and-Fast, Stringently Enforced Rule
Compliance audit calls for both: event logging and log reviewing. However, it is witnessed that only for the sake of being compliant to the regulatory acts, to which they are legally bound, companies are willing to opt for event log inspection. But minus log reviewing and analyzing, an event log application is a mere security camera recording with evidence, but no crime patrol. It is like gathering information on the confidential data loot but no eyes to see.
Why spend on an event log management tool that serves compliance log management?
Simple! Since it is a source of evidence, assurance, and most importantly, an investment measure.
Source of evidence, in terms of providing timely information, objective news and proving as a witness required to resolve confidential data theft issues.
Assurance of continuous monitoring and alerting functionality that assists in situational awareness for appropriate handling of the situation. An event log application acts as an identifier of threats.
Investment in investigation of inappropriate behavior within the systems through an event log analyzer that analyzes logs and provides an insight into the events captured in logs. Investment because an event log application, like a lie detector, is a threat detector that locks security incidents, assists in preventing policy breaches and avoids getting duped by any trickster or hacker, assists in rectifying operational errors.
Tips from the Auditor’s Perspective:
- Your event log tool should continuously trail for events and retain the logs originality. Logs that are protected from any kind of manipulation serve as a quality assurance to the auditors and mark as a good compliance log management practice.
- The log reporting structure should be compatible and comprehensive to human understanding. It should be systematically presented with indexes to locate the trends and behavior of activities that occurred within the infrastructure.
- It is important to learn what kind of logs correspond to the compliance log management requirements that your organization is to abide with. Accordingly, your reports should introduce event logs with appropriate categorization of events. Using an advanced event log tool, you can customize the inbuilt reporting structure to match the compliance log management and audit needs.
- Compliance audit aims at requiring the operating systems, a home to personally identifiable information (PII), to record any network issues.
Plan of Action: is to not only meet regulatory compliance sta
ndards but also stay confirmed about secured IT operations within the network as a part of compliance log management. As a step to satisfy these needs, you require EventLog Analyzer as your log management tool. Opting for EventLog Analyzer, you can achieve event normalization. In other words, you can get rid of the formatting issues that could result in a Windows Vista event log file being unreadable on Windows XP systems. The tool supports EVT and EVTX log format.
What exact information are the auditors looking for?
- Study of the process involved in following corporate policies and set compliance standards and whether or not these procedures are in sync with the applications and the operating systems within the network
- Recordings of security updates and host users have a place in the event logs
- Detailed analysis and storage of information on any changes or revision in the applications and systems including: user responsible for modification, the when and what changes have taken place and the cause for the modification, logon-logoff attempts, date and time, effective from and on which data files or network resources
To conclude, every IT organization for security of systems, servers and overall network environment should be acknowledged on the legal requirements and the risks involved in not applying EventLog Analyzer tool as a means to achieve compliance log management. These risks include:incurring expenses on the name of penalty for customer credentials theft, data breaches, and unable to abide by the regulatory standards set by the government. If you feel your organization is safe with current tools, it is time you know that the security concerns are very high with the high-tech hackers on prowl, awaiting for a loop hole in your network. Your IT infrastructure might not be as safe as you think it to be!
