Monitoring Computing Resources
Security alerting and monitoring is a proactive approach to safeguarding digital assets and sensitive information, and involves the continuous observation and analysis of various aspects of a computing environment to identify and respond to potential security threats in real time.
The goal is to minimize the risk of data breaches, unauthorized access, and system vulnerabilities by regularly and closely reviewing the following:
- Log files: Log files are text files that reside on every device, recording events as they happen. They contain a wealth of information about system events, errors, user interactions, and security incidents, acting as an audit trail by which an event can be tracked. They therefore serve as a valuable resource for troubleshooting, anomaly detection, and security breach prevention. An example log file can be found in Figure 17.1:
Figure 17.1: Log file
As you can see, this log file shows...