Logging & Alerting controls ensure that security-relevant events are captured, collected, analyzed, and escalated. Without comprehensive logging, detection and forensic capabilities are severely limited.
Critical systems are identified and onboarded to centralized logging: endpoints, network devices, identity systems, cloud platforms, applications, and security tooling. New systems are evaluated for logging requirements before production. Log sources are prioritized by risk and criticality.
Logs are centrally collected in near real-time. Log integrity is protected through encryption in transit and access controls. Retention periods meet regulatory and business requirements.
Ingested logs are normalized to a standard schema for consistent analysis. Logs are enriched with contextual metadata where available (asset criticality, user identity, threat intelligence indicators). Parsing rules are reviewed periodically.
Detection rules are implemented for defined use cases with severity classification. Rules are tuned regularly to manage false positive and false negative rates. Changes to detection logic follow change management procedures.
Alerts route through a defined pipeline: automated triage, ticket creation, notification to response teams. High and critical severity alerts trigger immediate paging. Escalation procedures and response SLAs are documented.