Next-generation SIEM and log management:
One area where the tools can provide the most needed help is in compliance. Corporations increasingly face the challenge of staying accountable to customers, employees and shareholders, and that means protecting IT infrastructure, customer and corporate data, and complying with rules and regulations as defined by the government and industry. Log management and SIEM correlation technologies can work together to provide more comprehensive views to help companies satisfy their regulatory compliance requirements, make their IT and business processes more efficient and reduce management and technology costs in the process.
IT organizations also will expect log management and intelligence technologies to provide more value to business activity monitoring and business intelligence. Though SIEM will continue to capture security-related data, its correlation engine can be re-appropriated to correlate business processes and monitor internal events related to performance, uptime, capability utilization and service-level management. The combined solutions provide deeper insight into not just IT operations but also business processes. In short, by integrating SIEM and log management, it is easy to see how companies can save by re-duplicating efforts and functionality. The functions of collecting, archiving, indexing and correlating log data can be collapsed. That will also lead to savings in the resources required and in the maintenance of the tools.