Three friends and I went hiking last week in a dense forest. The objective was clear: to reach a small fortress about six miles from base camp. Without maps, or smartphones and no real clue how to get there, we were on our own. With no rules, or parameters to validate our moves and literally no support or back-up, we had to make instant decisions based on events as they occurred. We were trailblazers, quite literally, and had to innovate in creating a trail for others to follow just to reach our goal.
Trailblazing is the process of leaving markings that follow each other at certain — though not necessarily exactly defined — distances, and marking the direction of the trail. The markings left by previous hikers help others follow the best trail.
This is essentially what today’s organizations have to face. They know the end objectives (mitigate risks and comply) and apply forensics to determine what went wrong so it can be amended the next time. If you’re lucky, you can isolate the event and put a mark up so others don’t follow that path in the future, but the ability to make decisions in real time or leverage trailblazing is what differentiate organizations from being average to becoming outstanding.
Big Data Analysis Can Help Answer What’s Hiding in Your Logs
Analyzing what went wrong (from our logs) after we got lost, we decided to start trailblazing ourselves and in the next 90 minutes, we were at our destination. Lesson learned the hard way. In the future, other hikers on that path can use our markings without getting lost. Enterprises need not follow this path either. For initiatives germane to security or compliance, they do have a better option. Working with so many customers who’ve applied innovation and leveraged infrastructure technology in obtaining the most out of their existing assets, I’ve experienced the value organizations obtain from effective 21st century log management software.
Big data or not, the fact is, millions of events are registered within the logs of applications and systems within an enterprise. Those organizations with the ability to make sense of these events — do forensics, debug information or have the ability to visually represent and analyze activity log data — can effectively mitigate risks and determine a strategy for future unfavorable incidents, and also comply with regulations.
Trailblazing with log events allows organizations to identify and isolate threats, and enable best practices for similar future needs.
For additional reading on managing enterprise logging requirements, see LogLogic Analytics.
