Paul Bunyan and the Log Jam. Log Analysis.

In American folklore, there is a giant lumberjack, Paul Bunyan, accompanied by Babe the Giant Blue Ox, his pet. One classic Paul Bunyan “tall tale”, Paul Bunyan and the Log Jam, involves Bunyan and Babe clearing a huge log jam on the Wisconsin River. It was springtime, and the cut logs were piled more than 200 feet high. Paul Bunyan put Babe into the river, and began shooting Babe with buckshot. Babe, thinking it was mosquitoes, began to swish his giant tale, stirring up the river, and broke the log jam. For the loggers, this was a lifesaver. 

In our cyberverse (cyber universe), we are surrounded by logs. Every second, every device, every service – they all generate logs. Many years ago, when devices and networks were smaller and a lot simpler, people used to actually read these logs periodically, looking for anomalies. 

Logs provide major clues when something is amiss, as to what is wrong, and in turn, provide clues on how to fix the problem(s). They also can provide warnings before a device or service fails – when they are just starting to get into trouble. 

Today, even a home network generates more log data than a human can readily read, digest, and infer any conclusions. A business network, even for a small business network, generates serious amounts of log data every second. Unfortunately, we do not have Paul Bunyan and Babe, the big blue ox, to clear the logjam. 

However, in our cyberverse (cyber universe), we do have a solution to avoid be drowned by log data. Deploy a Log Analysis tool. There are 2 giants in the world of Log Analysis: Splunk and Elastic. 

Both are cloud-based. Splunk, by far the larger of the two, uses a metered service approach for its pricing. The more logs processed, the more the customer pays. Because of the sheer volume of logs produced every minute on even a small network, the metered gigabytes have a way of rapidly growing, and with it, the monthly Splunk bill. Splunk’s pricing is reminiscent of cell phone minute pricing before unlimited minutes became the norm thanks to competition. 

Elastic is the creator of the ELK Stack of programs. This is a combination of Elastic, Logstash, and Kibana. Each software package is a component of a total Log Analysis and Reporting solution. The open source ELK Stack, which we have used to create our Log Analysis appliance, the Q-Log, includes a machine-learning to component to reduce false alarms. Elastic, for its own products, uses a metered service approach for log analysis pricing. The more gigabytes analyzed, the bigger the bill. 

However, at Quantalytics, we have taken a different pricing approach from the incumbents, Splunk and Elastic, plus smaller log analysis market participants.  

For the Q-Log network security appliance, Quantalytics charges $250 per month for UNLIMITED log analysis, reporting, and alerting. We offer a Virtual Machine (VM) version for $500 per month. The VM also provides unlimited log analysis, too, with no extra charge per Core, RAM, or network connections or speed of the connections. This is not a gimmick with a “perpetual license” purchase. Just pricing that is simple, easy-to-understand, and straight-forward to budget. The Q-Log has 190 GBytes of space for log retention, and can be networked to a NAS for even more. 

Our appliances are all subscription-only. No upfront cost or capital expense. (CapEx.) Our subscription period is 2 years.  

Our appliances, including the Q-Log, are enterprise-class. The Q-Log is especially useful for Operations Technology (OT) networks, where there are lots of log data, but no good automated ways to analyze them and catch issues. OT networks can not access cloud services due to air-gapping. The Q-Log provides the benefits of the latest log analysis tools while preserving air-gap security. For IT Networks, the Q-Log provides a lower cost replacement for the incumbents' log analysis services. 

For those readers curious to learn more about the Q-Log, the following is a link to our product description web page: 

https://www.quantalytics.com/q-log/

Also, for readers who are interested, this is a link to a downloadable, detailed spec sheet. Q-Log Spec Sheet PDF

Paul Bunyan had his pet, Babe the Blue Ox, to help him open up a logjam. At Quantalytics, we have the Q-Log instead.  

Arthur Carp | Quantalytics, Inc. | [email protected] | @quantalytics