it event correlation and analysis

When it comes to being alerted in real-time to possible incoming threats to both security and performance, having the right suite of IT event correlation and analysis tools can make all the difference in the world and potentially save your company immensely. In today’s feature, we take a look at some things to look at and be aware of when searching for the best IT event correlation and analysis solution for your company’s immediate needs and plan for growth.

Before diving into the best solutions, let us first take a look at what event correlation truly is and the analysis that goes with it. At it’s core, event correlation is the tying together of a certain pattern of events on you network or across multiple networks and finding the associated correlation between them. Often times, event correlation tools are used as a security measure as they can often notify you when a certain known dangerous pattern of events on your network is taking place so you can take stems to neutralize the threat immediately. Once your event correlation tool is off and running regularly, you can then also analyze your daily logs to look for areas of inefficiency which you can then work with your team on finding solutions to fix.

Weather it be error messages, security warnings or just general user information, events on your IT infrastructure range from the hundreds to thousands and are simply too much to manually track and analyze. On top of that, when a malicious event does happen on your network it can trigger a chain of events that can be crippling to your entire company’s operations and worse yet, bottom line. While more traditional software such network management software can track these events they often do so in an old school, clunky and annoying way by alerting you many times for the exact same event. A strong IT event correlation and analysis tool not only locates and pinpoints that event to alert you in real time, but also runs a root cause analysis on the incident to understand how it happen and how to prevent it in the future. A strong IT event correlation and analysis tool also completely automates the managing of events, the correlation they have amongst themselves, and notifies you and your team instantly of any potential issues that arise throughout the day.

Let’s say as an example your company’s main wireless printer/copier goes down. The hundreds of employee computers that use that printer/copier will receive error events simultaneously, which are passed over your network. Your IT team, will then manually go in and look at the events to see what happened and ultimately fix it, spending potentially hours on the single, seemingly harmless event of a printer crashing. An IT event correlation and analysis tool can automatically detect the event, establish a root cause, and produce a report for you (or your IT team) about the issue in great detail. Beyond simple error messages, IT event correlation and analysis tools should also be able to aggregate, correlate and ultimately filter all of the thousands of events on your network that are happening every hour. Without a doubt, a strong IT event correlation and analysis tool should completely automate this process after your initial setup.
As with all software or network tools you are considering this day and age, it’s important to see if you can find a trial demo version of it to try and get feel of it before purchase. It might also be a good idea to let your team play with the demo software a bit, just to see if its something that will make for an easy transition to any software already in place.

The primary function of a network event correlation tool is to look at events happening on a network in real time and provide context to the correlations amongst them. This can be anything from repeated attempted logins of the same user name onto a computer on the network, to events stemming from the running of multiple applications simultaneously. The task of protecting your company’s networks is one that should be taken with the utmost seriousness and is often IT professionals most grave concern. By finding the best network event correlation tool to fit your company’s needs and size, you can rest easier knowing that you have taken all of the steps necessary to monitor incoming threats that put both your company’s security and efficiency in danger if not tracked and analyzed correctly. Today we will take a look at some of the most important features to think about before purchasing your network event correlation tool.

One feature to consider is the ability for your network event correlation tool to in real-time consolidate and archive all of the action into what are known as “syslogs” straight to SQL Server or some other SQL tool that your company uses. Your assigned IT employee can then export those logs into CSV, HTML, TCT, EVT, XML or whatever other format that you desire. Once safely put somewhere such as on a local server or hard drive, the tool can then can clear the logged events to keep a precise account day after day if you so choose.

Another feature that will prove time after time to be critical is the network event correlation tool that allows for real time notifications over wide range of platforms. From SMS, to detailed emails, to desktop notifications from within the software, the quicker you and your team can be made aware of potential issues the faster you can act on them and get them under control. SMS notification is widely considered the most beneficial and useful of the options, as it can make the person assigned to the tool aware in a matter of seconds.

Generating reports is an aspect of network event correlation tools that can be often overlooked yet can be key in the utility of the product. Most network event correlation tools offer automatic generation of reports that can target specific servers or computers on your network, or produce a higher level summary of the events and some basic analysis and correlation guidelines. As an example, a report that you may want to see every day is one that shows you the time, location and username of all the failed logins that happened across your network. Using this as an example, you may be able to determine a pattern of behavior that is targeting a weakness on your network you may have otherwise not known about. With many of the software out there today, you can have a report such as the one aforementioned ran for a time period of anywhere from 24 hours or the month.

Many of the various types of tools and software in today’s landscape offer a free trial demo version of their product available for download. We highly recommend you take advantage of such offerings as it lets you see if it’s a tool you can readily use and ensure the learning curve for your team won’t be too steep that it’s detrimental. Often times, you will especially want to see with network event correlation tools if the software is compatible with your suite of other tools already in use and can the transition to it can be seamless and not produce any issues.

A simple event correlator is a form of event correlation that is written entirely in the programing language PERL. In many ways, a simple event correlator is a light-version of a full on event correlation software. Like a standard event correlation tool, a simple event correlator can do everything from manage security to monitor, track and analyze events in your log files. Unlike the full, often more expensive event correlation solutions, a simple event correlator independent from any specific platform and runs itself as a single process. With that said, it can be deployed in various places on your network such as terminals or various shell pipelines. With all of this however, you can still run many processes at the same time and for a variety of tasks at the same time.

Primarily and at its core, simple event correlator is designed to find event patterns set up by specific rules you apply, which can be found in configuration files. It does however also offer more advanced features such as log file analysis and logic analysis that make it great for a wide range of more traditional event correlation tasks. One thing that a simple event correlator is often used for is monitoring and preventing brute force attacks on your system. By placing a process in your login event file, the correlator can watch for repeated failed attempts onto your network and notify you of such events to take action.

Overall, the draw to a simple event correlator over a more traditional suite of event correlation tools is purely the flexibility of the tool. The ability to handle event logs of many different contexts really set differentiate the tool from others and make it a big draw for many IT professionals. For example imagine a scanner that is continuously having issues with paper jamming and a traditional event correlation would send an email every time it saw a jam. The simple event correlator can recognize that an email has already been sent out and prevent your inbox from being flooded by dozens of emails every time it jams.

Also unique to the simple event correlator is that rules can be set to begin event correlation operations continuously, while simultaneously running rules that react automatically in real time to specific events or simply at a set time on your network’s internal clock. Surmise for a second that your simple event correlator is set up to monitor log files for a specific type of event that you have recognized as worthy. Now at the same time, suppose you are looking at configuration files for a rule pertaining to failed system logins. Within the preset rule, the pattern metric will recognize the aforementioned events and display a message for you and your team to further inquire about the events correlation and how they will affect your system. Your simple event correlator is also smart enough to check of a correlation operation for a given event should it already be in place, to prevent being bombarded with messages.

Another feature of your simple event correlator tool is the context. At its foundation, a context is simply a memory tool, which can have more than one titled name, event store and a limited pre-determined life span. In addition, a context can be used fore aggregating events and reporting the aggregated events to you and your team either in real time or in a daily summary. Another great feature of the context is that you can set up an action list to automatically execute if the context is nearing expiration.

The task of stringing together a set of events and finding correlation between them and the events they in turn produce is at its core what event correlator software does. Managing security, detecting and limiting fraud and monitoring your network’s application logs are just a few of the assignments your event correlator will ultimately be responsible for. Being able to track and analyze all of your organization’s digitally logged events will help you in real-time ensure that your IT department and in turn company will be running at its highest level of efficiency at all times.

One example of a malicious intruder effort that event correlator software can prevent is an all out brute force attack by an intruder trying to access your system in a traditional false login attempt. In this case, repeated attempted logins show up in your event logs which can then set a trigger to notify you of the suspicious activity to take action on it. A log like this one, that is continually produced and spewed across your logs, can easily be picked up by an event correlator but almost certainly missed if being done manually, which can be random at best in thwarting attacks.

One of the major points of having a solid event correlator is to limit the amount of noise that floods your logs and IT world on a daily basis. Often times, much of that activity and bombardment of event logs are unimportant, but with no software telling you that your IT department spends times on things that do drive value and are no threat to security or efficiency. With this said, a feature to always consider in an event correlator is one that can notify you via alerts in real time of any potential attacks or threats to your network based off a pattern of events that you have pre-programmed. Weather it be via email, SMS, or even a built in alert system to the software, it’s a good idea to look for an event correlator software that can get you notified immediately of any potential issues. The quicker you and your team can react to a potentially harmful event to your network the quicker you can neutralize it and keep business running as normal.

Having an event correlator tool or suite of event correlation tools is becoming more and more commonplace and a staple of IT departments throughout the world. At its purest form and purpose, an event correlator tool gives you the ease of mind that your network is being monitored and accounted for at all times, even when you are not at the office or paying attention. As much as companies rely on their network and digital setups, one attack or lapse in security could cripple your entire company’s operations. This can be especially true if you are an online retailer of any kind. Just a single day offline, especially if it is around the holidays when attacks can often occur, can be a massive blow to sales and ultimately the future of your company. Various issues and security breach attempts will ultimately happen on your network no matter the size or security measures. When they do, it’s important to use your event correlator as a tool to conduct a root cause analysis so you can see what went wrong and how to prevent the same issue in the future.

Finding the right event correlator can be a daunting task but by following the advice here and doing your proper due diligence you can make it simpler. Before making your purchase, try and find a tool that offers a free demo version so you can see if the usability of the software is one that fit’s your team.

Analyzing and correlating events on your networks and system infrastructure has long been a chore for company’s IT departments both big and small. A suite of tools is often critical to manage such events, and that all begins with a sufficient event correlation manager. These days, applications dominate the world of software and IT tools alike. With all of these applications, spanning across various platforms, servers and computers, events are happening amongst the application nodes and need monitoring constantly.

One feature and one of the best ways to utilize your event correlation tool is to write filters and rules to single out critical events and set rules that’s track the highest volume of specific events that your network monitors. By finding a tool that takes an emphasis on this feature, you can save your company a ton of money by reducing the large amount of payroll hours that it takes to write these extensive and often complicate set of rules.

Another major feature to consider when looking at event correlation manager tools is one that his highly automated. Algorithms help automate the correlating of events immensely by constantly learning new patterns and seeking out unique identifiers to correlate events and analyze the relationships between them in real time. When searching for outliers and complicated patterns of events, a human alone cannot adequately track and identify what’s important. A good event correlation manager will come ready with algorithm management and make a difference in performance almost right away.

As previously mentioned, applications while useful and dominating in today’s tech landscape, can create a plethora of problems generating events and alerts that can clog up networks and reduce efficiency. Especially with cloud based systems of all kinds becoming more and more commonplace, events are happening all over you network and your staff should not be burdened with keeping an eye on them. Connections generating event data at every minute of the day needs an event correlation manager to keep an eye on them and make sure nothing is amuck. Often times IT directors are spending an inordinate and unnecessary amount of time resolving issues that the proper set of event correlation tools can take care of seamlessly.

Finding an event correlation manager that produces aesthetically nice yet comprehensive reports is a feature you should not overlook. One of the most common tasks you (or someone on your staff) will complete is running reports that display your logs and alert you to potential threats. From IT operations to authentications, change management, endpoint monitoring and most importantly security, having a tool that can easily produce reports is a real game changer. Depending on the industry of your company, compliance requirements often come into effect and reporting is critical to ensure you remain compliant and lose no efficiency as your business expands and navigates the business landscape moving forward.

As with any tool or software you are considering, it’s often a great idea to see if the potential tool or software has a free demo so you can get a feel for the nuances of it. Not only is it good practice from a usability standpoint, but it will also let you see if it is compatible with your other suite of tools, software and applications that you currently use daily to operate your business. When using the demo, also check out the software company’s customer service and support in case you do run into issues down the line that need out of house assistance. While attaining the correct event correlation manager is often critical to IT department’s efficiency, the durability and long term reliability of the tool is equally important.

At its foundation and as the title would suggest, event correlation is a tool that is used by IT managers across the globe to track, analyze and report on various events spanning across their network from applications, routers and other devices. The massive volume of these events happening minute to minute on your network is just too much for a human being to keep track of, and an event correlation tool looks for patterns from pre-set rules that trigger alerts for the IT department to look into. In today’s piece, we take a look at the various event correlation techniques that IT professionals successfully use.

In all of the event correlation techniques we will touch on today, there are a few common themes that will remain true throughout. First and foremost, they all are based on finding and notifying the user of potentially harmful events. Secondly, they are all themed with finding the actual cause of the issue you are facing. And as the name would suggest, all of the following event correlation techniques correlate events to single them out and prepare you and your team for action moving forward surrounding the events in question.

Widely considered one of the most successful event correlation techniques is a technique called rule-based reasoning. Rule based reasoning at its core uses what is referred to as a knowledge base to create a chain reaction type of rule that says if something happens, do this. Rules within the rule based reasoning are how the system knows which operational actions that need to be carried out. The technique also uses what is called a working memory that learns and will ultimately realize for you when your network goes into a dangerous mode. Within it, it logs information about the networking being analyzed and can provide real-time feedback to you and your team. In conjunction with the knowledge base, an interference engine takes a look at the current status of on the rule-base and ties it to a similar output within the rule. Once this takes places, the knowledge base puts an action into effect in real-time using the working memory to do so. One thing to note and keep in mind if you decide to move forward with this approach, is that as the working memory is more fully utilized, the needs for the associated memory grows quickly.

Another one of the more popular event correlation techniques is a technique referred to as the codebook approach. In the codebook approach, a causality graph model identifies the fundamental relationship between problems and the associated symptoms and creates a unique code that can be tied to the problem. With this, you can quickly identify known issues by referring to the matching code giving you and your team the chance to act on it as fast as possible. The algorithm itself is code-based by nature, and can easily recognize potentially dangerous event correlations.
In summary, there is no full proof completely perfect event correlation technique. The thing to remember when thinking about event correlation techniques is to choose one that your team can implement efficiently and that does not cause a disruption in the effective use of your event correlation tool itself. Also, when researching and ultimately deciding on an event correlation technique, it’s not required to only choose one. A hybrid approach of multiple event correlation techniques is common and when done correctly can be quite effective in solving problems and successfully conducting your root cause analysis. Combining rule based reasoning with another approach called case based reasoning, is one example of a hybrid type approach that can pay dividends.

In the world of IT, event correlation is a common and often critical practice that company’s need to ensure maximum efficiency and security. In today’s article we take a look at the intricacies and features to look for when starting the search to acquire the appropriate suite of IT event correlation tools and software for your company. While the to be mentioned features are important, it’s equally important to way the pros and cons of every software and ensure its usefulness in your IT department’s structure.

Event correlation software at its core tracks events that occur on your networks and analyze how and why they interact with each other in the way they do. It not only ensures maximum efficiency for your company by catching potential slowdowns before they happen, but it also monitors your network’s security and looks for threats that may be lurking on your network. Not only does IT event correlation software monitor the events from your routers and switches, but it also keeps an eye on the interactions between your applications in real time and use a custom set of rules and filters ensure you and your team miss nothing.

One feature to consider when looking at event correlation software is the ability for the software to notify in you in real time of any incoming threats from events on your network. A solid set of system alerts can make the difference between catching what is initially a minor issue before spread and causing wide spread havoc to your network and company. Data is everywhere, and setting up alerts to keep an eye on them is widely considered a must have.
Another feature that is often considered critical when searching for the best IT event correlation software for your needs, is a term called compression. Essentially. Compression singles out events that continually happen over and over. At its core, it takes out duplicate events and combines them into one so that hundreds of the same event come through as a single alert. For example, if an application connection fails 3,000 times over the course of a day, the alert is pushed through as “application connection failed 3,000 times” instead of receiving 3,000 separate alerts. Not having the ability to find repetitive events and send them through as a single event and notification can really turn into a nuisance.

Ultimately, some form of IT event correlation tools are becoming as common place in IT departments as network monitoring tools or application monitoring software. The simple awareness that IT event correlation gives you will instantly give you peace of mind that your network is being watched around the clock, and limit the amount of man hours spent manually checking on it. When problems are found, conducting a root cause analysis to find how the issue happened and implement ways to prevent it in the future is a great habit to form and the proper event correlation software will help you to do that.
Most of the IT event correlation software in the marketplace today offers some form of trial or free demo that you can download to really get a feel of how usable the software will be for you and your team. Often times it’s a good idea to have some members of your team that will be using the software give it a spin as well to make sure it’s a good fit. While most IT event correlation software are compatible with all operating systems, downloading a demo will ensure that it is and also ensure that it interacts with your other suite of applications and software efficiently and smoothly.

We hear the term tossed around the IT landscape paired with different jargon such as “event correlation analysis” or “event correlation techniques.” But exactly what is event correlation? Essentially, event correlation is a technique for making sense of the enormous amount of events that data or security centers process and ultimately analyze on an hourly and daily basis. While in use, your event correlation tool is constantly sensing and analyzing the relationships between the events it is processing.

Every year data centers grow in size and complexity at a compounding speed. With that said, being able to answer the question “What is event correlation?” could become a must-know in your organization. Within your company data is coming from a plethora of sources. Compiled inside of the data, event correlation helps to identify the events (or specific data points) that can make a substantial difference to your business and how they can relate to the other events and data points in your system. In many ways, the short answer for what is event correlation it is a tool that lessens the flurry of activity that is unimportant so IT can focus on the activities and issues that substantially matter to the department and overall business objectives.

Part of the question of “what is event correlation?” is being able to recognize what kind of data and from what source of data we are referring to. While there are many examples and every organization will be different, security events, server records, application log errors and failures, alerts such as Simple Network Management Protocol traps, suspicious firewall traffic and operating system logs are just a few that come to mind. Event correlation allows for all of those often simple fixes to be recognized quickly and presented to the IT manager in a way such that he or she can maximize their time.

When thinking about “what is event correlation” it’s important to note that when referring to real-time event correlation, security is everything. Having an event correlation tool can deal with incoming threats and potential data breaches. The critical information that your company values so much is under constant attacks from hackers attempting to infiltrate your network and steal your sensitive information. Whether you are dealing with the threat in real time as it happens or are investigating it afterwards, having event correlation tools to help you do that could make the difference between a minor and major slowdown of your entire organization. If there is no event correlation tool to automate this process, a manual investigation will take an enormous amount of time.

Event correlation can also help to prevent attacks by setting up patterns that will trigger an alert to investigate. By setting up a rule, you can track “attack patterns” that when a certain pattern of events happen on your network, the event correlation tool recognizes it as a threat and notifies you instantly via text message or email.

The question of “what is event correlation?” has both a simple and complex answer. Above all, it’s important to recognize that by having a strong set of event correlation tools will make you and your staff as efficient as possible and make the best use of your time and skills. It will also help to maximize your company’s revenues by ensuring there is as little downtime as possible. Event correlation allows IT departments to gain near maximum visibility into their network operations while allowing them to monitor both security and efficiency. As a large proponent of event correlation software, one would argue that you are taking a risk more-so by not having at least one.

Acquiring the correct suite of event correlation and analysis tools can make all the difference in the world in minimizing your organization’s exposure to incoming threats and decrease the vulnerability that it will face as it grows in size. If you are tasked with this important purchase, you’ll want to consider a plethora of important features as you conduct your research. In today’s piece, we will talk about some of those features that will be critical in protecting your company’s most valuable data and information.

Essentially, event correlation is a way to make economical and layman sense of a large number of actions and isolating the handful of events that are most critical to the larger data set. Event correlation and analysis tools help get this done by scoping out and analyzing the relationships between all of the events and honing in on the most important.

Whether you are a security analyst or just an IT professional charged with protecting your company’s networks and servers, event correlation and analysis should be a main tool in your arsenal and be actively used. The log correlation contains clues and tidbits about how your entire network communicates both inward and outward so when it comes to troubleshooting or security intelligence, the event correlation log should be your best friend. Almost every security breach has evidence of the breach in the event correlation log but the signs are not obvious. With that said event correlation and the analysis of it could often be extremely complicated and-so looked over even though it’s obvious importance. Event correlation and analysis tools help to bridge that gap of cryptic language and convoluted system language that can often make the difference between a great IT security department and one that is constantly on the phone troubleshooting their own systems!

Security breaches and incoming threat misses ultimately do happen no matter how prepared you think you are as an IT department or company. Event correlation and analysis tools constantly scan your event log data searching for clues that you will need using an automated process. You as the IT security professional need to be asking five things about the breach: where, when, who, what and how. Intelligence with in your event correlation and analysis suite will start asking those questions before your team even knows what hit them.

Using event correlation rules to set up things like alerts and automated log reports is another critical feature to consider when looking for the perfect set of event correlation and analysis tools. These rules will simply alert people how to analyze the log events by automatically correlating the data where appropriate. By being alerted early on certain processes of log data, the right course of action can start place so it’s nipped in the tail early, limiting potential widespread damage and chaos for your IT department. A key to the alert feature is finding one that can notify you or your team in real-time. Most event correlation and analysis tools even offer the ability to set these alerts up custom, ensuring you can be thorough in your protection. Where can you expect these attacks to come from? Spoofing, brute force authentication, web service attacks and client side exploits are just a few culprits to be on the lookout for.

Finding the right event correlation and analysis tools for your custom set of needs can be a tedious process, as it should be given the magnitude of security it can bring you. All of the features mentioned today are just a few to consider in your search. As with most software you purchase in this day and age, it’s always a good idea to look for a free trial version to make sure it’s one you can use adequately.