Log management and intelligence

Log management (LM) comprises an approach to dealing with large volumes of computer-generated log messages (also known as audit records, audit trails, event-logs, etc.). Log Management generally covers:

The primary drivers for log management implementations are concerns about security, system and network operations (such as system or network administration) and regulatory compliance. Logs are generated by nearly every computing device, and can often be directed to different locations both on a local file system or remote system.

Effectively analyzing large volumes of diverse logs can pose many challenges, such as:

Users and potential users of log management may purchase complete commercial tools or build their own log-management and intelligence tools, assembling the functionality from various open-source components, or acquire (sub-)systems from commercial vendors. Log management is a complicated process and organizations often make mistakes while approaching it.

Suggestions were made to change the definition of logging. This change would keep matters both more pure and more easily maintainable:

Logging can produce technical information usable for the maintenance of applications or websites. It can serve:

One view of assessing the maturity of an organization in terms of the deployment of log-management tools might use successive levels such as:

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