When you use a personal computer, various kinds of information such as what software you use and/or what files you open are recorded on the PC. Also, when you browse websites on the Internet, information such as which website you visited on a certain date are recorded. Moreover, if you use particular software, you can collect more information. Those records of information are called "logs". "Logs" contain enormous amount of data so that you can tell, if you delve into it, who used a computer and how and when they used it.
What Are "Logs"?
Why You Need Log Management?
The number of "logs" on a computer can be enormous if it belongs to a company, a school, or a similar environment, and is used by many people. In such an environment, it can be very troublesome to find out whether a certain user opened a certain file on a certain date or not. Log management software can help answer such questions. By analyzing logs, you can detect exactly who has done what and when, and therefore, you can prevent fraud and pinpoint causes when problems arise.
What You Can Do with Log Management Software?
Log management software enables you to collect more information than the log data each PC normally collects automatically. Also, such software can analyze the collected logs and display explicit reports of the results for administrators. And, log management software also provides various supplementary functions which administrators often require, such as compression of collected logs, real-time log monitoring, and the prevention of improper manipulation of logs.
How Effective Is It?
One important problem that each company and organization should work hard to prevent is information leakage through the Internet or external memory devices such as a USB memory stick. Implementing log management enables you to block such incidents. Also, if information leakage does happen, you can quickly apply operations to detect the causes and limit the extent of damage by examining logs. By just introducing a log management system, side effects, such as streamlining and cost reduction, can be expected, because the number of users who use their office PCs for personal use will decrease.
