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What are the most important types of logs to monitor in a cloud environment?

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Cloud computing offers many benefits, but also poses new challenges for information security. One of the key aspects of cloud security is monitoring and logging, which can help detect and respond to threats, troubleshoot issues, and comply with regulations. However, not all logs are created equal, and some are more important than others depending on the cloud service model, the data sensitivity, and the security objectives. In this article, we will discuss what are the most important types of logs to monitor in a cloud environment, and how to leverage them effectively.

本文章的要点总结

Monitor critical log types:

Focus on authentication, authorization, and application logs. These logs are vital for detecting unauthorized access and application errors, helping ensure data protection and compliance.### *Tailor logging to data sensitivity:Encrypt logs and restrict access based on data sensitivity. This approach secures sensitive information while meeting regulatory requirements like GDPR or HIPAA.

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Lalit Bhakuni

Vice President | Enterprise IT & OT…
Imran Khan

1 Cloud service models

When deciding which logs to monitor, the cloud service model is the first thing to consider. This model defines the level of responsibility and control that the cloud provider and customer have over the infrastructure, platform, and software. The main cloud service models are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). IaaS consists of physical or virtual servers, storage, network, and other basic resources, while PaaS offers a runtime environment, middleware, databases, and other tools for developing and deploying applications. SaaS provides software applications and data accessed through a web browser or API. Depending on the model chosen, customers have different levels of visibility and control over the cloud components. For instance, in IaaS customers can access and monitor logs from the operating system and applications but not from the underlying hardware or network. In PaaS customers can access and monitor logs from code and data but not from runtime environment or databases. Lastly in SaaS customers can access and monitor logs from software usage and data but not from software configuration or infrastructure.

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2 Data sensitivity

The second thing to consider when choosing which logs to monitor is the data sensitivity, which refers to the level of risk and impact that the data exposure or compromise would have on the customer's business, reputation, and compliance. The data sensitivity can vary depending on the type, nature, and context of the data, as well as the legal and regulatory requirements that apply to it. For example, personal, financial, or health data are usually more sensitive than public or generic data, and may be subject to specific standards and regulations, such as GDPR, PCI DSS, or HIPAA.

The data sensitivity affects the logging strategy, as the customer needs to ensure that the logs are collected, stored, transmitted, and analyzed in a secure and compliant manner. For example, the customer may need to encrypt the logs, restrict the access to them, retain them for a certain period of time, or audit them regularly. The customer may also need to monitor the logs for any signs of data breaches, data leaks, or data misuse, and report them accordingly.

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3 Security objectives

When choosing which logs to monitor, it’s important to consider the customer's security objectives. These objectives can vary, but typically fall into three main categories: detection, investigation, and compliance. Detection involves monitoring the logs for anomalies, incidents, or attacks that may affect the cloud environment. Investigation involves analyzing the logs for root causes and impacts. Compliance involves verifying the logs for any compliance requirements. Each security objective requires different types of logs, as well as different tools and techniques for monitoring and logging. For example, detection may require real-time monitoring of logs with anomaly detection or threat intelligence, while investigation may require forensic analysis or incident response. Compliance may require periodic verification of logs with compliance frameworks or audit reports.

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4 Important types of logs

Based on the cloud service model, the data sensitivity, and the security objectives, customers can determine which types of logs are most important to monitor in a cloud environment. While there is no definitive answer, as each customer may have different needs and preferences, some common and important log types to consider include authentication and authorization logs, application and data logs, configuration and change logs, network and traffic logs, and system and event logs. These logs are essential for detecting and investigating unauthorized access, malicious activity, application errors, data breaches, misconfigurations, network attacks, system failures, and outages. Additionally, they are important for verifying and complying with identity and access management policies and standards, data protection and data quality policies and standards, configuration management and change management policies and standards, network security and network performance policies and standards, system availability and system reliability policies and standards.

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Imran Khan
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Tailoring log monitoring based on service models, data sensitivity, and security objectives is key. The comprehensive list you've outlined, including authentication, authorization, application, data, configuration, change, network, traffic, system, and event logs, covers a spectrum of critical aspects. These logs play a pivotal role in not only detecting and investigating potential threats but also in verifying and complying with various policies and standards across identity management, data protection, configuration management, network security, and system reliability. It's a holistic approach to cloud monitoring that ensures robust security and compliance.

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5 How to leverage logs

Once the customer has identified which types of logs are the most important to monitor in a cloud environment, they can leverage them effectively by following some best practices and recommendations. This includes defining a logging policy, collecting and centralizing logs, filtering and normalizing them, enriching and correlating them, monitoring and alerting them, analyzing and visualizing them, and verifying and auditing them. All of these steps should be done using cloud-native or third-party tools or scripts. This will help the customer identify patterns, trends, or anomalies, as well as ensure compliance requirements or best practices.

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Jose Carlos Marco

MSc Engineer and IT passionate
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Always consider the Four Golden Signals when monitoring cloud applications. Following the SRE Google manual, they are: - Latency: how long it takes to process a request or even give an error. It will monitor the full stack of the service. - Traffic: how much demand you have in your service, and points you to dimension your service correctly. - Errors: such as the rate of requests that fail, help you quickly identify any problem. - Saturation: how full your service is, considering that errors and performance will probably suffer if it is very high. They will give you clues about any issue in the service and how the service is performing. How to measure each signal depends on your applications and cloud stacks.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Lalit Bhakuni

Vice President | Enterprise IT & OT Security | Head of Active Cyber Defense
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Based on my experience below logs are good to have - CASB Logs - Enforce security policies across cloud apps. - Cloud Infrastructure Logs -Track activities in cloud platforms like AWS or Azure. - Cloud Application Logs - Monitor user activities in SaaS applications. - IAM Logs -Record user access and authorization in the cloud. - Virtual Network Logs -Observe internal cloud network traffic. - Cloud Native Firewall Logs - Control and filter cloud traffic. - Endpoint Security Logs - Detect threats on cloudhosted endpoints. - Container & Orchestration Logs - Manage and secure containerized environments. - Web Application Firewall Logs - Protect against attacks on web services. - Storage Access Logs - Monitor access to cloud storage resources.

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Jaivrat Singh Rajoria

CyberSec Enthusiast! Helping organisations to achieve highly controlled & secured connectivity for widespread assets and ensuring end-users get seamless connectivity to carry out legitimate activities.
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Access logs In my view the most important logs to watch out for are the access logs: who, when, what and from where. To support the access we do have MFA enabled which asks for continuous authentication but that isn’t enough hence the security team must continuously monitor the access logs actively.

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What are the most important types of logs to monitor in a cloud environment?

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1 Cloud service models

2 Data sensitivity

3 Security objectives

4 Important types of logs

5 How to leverage logs

6 Here’s what else to consider

Information Security

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What are the most important types of logs to monitor in a cloud environment?

1

2

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6

1 Cloud service models

2 Data sensitivity

3 Security objectives

4 Important types of logs

5 How to leverage logs

6 Here’s what else to consider

Information Security

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