How do you use logs to identify and analyze incident indicators and root causes?

1 What are incident indicators and root causes?

An incident indicator is any sign or evidence that suggests a security incident has occurred or is in progress. For example, an indicator could be a suspicious network connection, a malware infection, a user account compromise, or a data breach. A root cause is the underlying factor or vulnerability that enabled the incident to happen. For example, a root cause could be a misconfigured firewall, a weak password, a phishing email, or a software bug. Identifying and analyzing incident indicators and root causes can help you contain, eradicate, and recover from an incident, as well as prevent or mitigate future incidents.

2 How to use logs to identify incident indicators?

Logs can be a useful tool for identifying incident indicators by providing information about events and activities that occurred on your systems, networks, and applications before, during, and after an incident. For example, logs can show who accessed your systems, what actions were performed, where the connections or requests came from and where they went to, and how your systems performed. To use logs to identify incident indicators, you need to collect and store logs from various sources such as operating systems, firewalls, routers, etc. Additionally, you need to correlate logs from different sources to get a comprehensive view of the incident and its impact. Log analysis tools or security information and event management (SIEM) systems can help with this process.

4 How to improve your logging capabilities and policies?

To maximize your logs for incident handling, you need to upgrade your logging capabilities and policies. Start by defining your logging objectives and requirements, such as what types of logs you need, how long you need to retain them, and how you will use them for incident handling. Then, configure your systems, networks, and applications to generate and capture accurate logs that meet your objectives. Additionally, implement a centralized log management system that can collect, store, and analyze logs from various sources. Establish a log retention policy that specifies how long you will keep your logs, where you will store them, how you will protect them, and how you will dispose of them. Moreover, review and audit your logs regularly to ensure they are complete, reliable, and secure. Logging plays an essential role in incident handling as it can help detect incident indicators and root causes. With the tips provided in this article, you can improve your logging capabilities and policies to boost your security posture and resilience.