Traditional logging tools are struggling to keep up with the explosive pace of data growth. Data collection isn’t the most straightforward process — so deploying and configuring all the tools necessary to manage this growth is more difficult than ever, and navigating evolving logging and monitoring requirements only adds another layer of complexity to the situation.

With the explosive growth in data and log sources, developing a comprehensive log management plan has never been more important. But effectively collecting, enriching, and routing this data is a complicated and costly process — one that Cribl and CrowdStrike are working together to simplify. Here are some ways to avoid the pitfalls of traditional logging and SIEM tools.

Anticipate Massive Growth in Data Quantities

Security and DevOps teams tend to underestimate how quickly data quantities are growing. Our ability to generate data is outpacing our ability to collect and draw insights from it. When you deploy a new logging solution or incorporate a new data source, you need to plan for this new volume of data so that you can actually get value from it.

Your entire logging infrastructure needs to scale with all this new data as well. Otherwise, you’ll encounter challenges like queries timing out or ingestion backlogs. DevOps, IT Ops, and Security teams will also face these problems.

Pull in Data and Share Across Your Entire Infrastructure

Even though observability and security teams have distinct functions and goals, the data they rely on overlaps now more than ever. In today’s world, hackers and adversaries don’t limit themselves to any one source of data, so all data has become security data.

Teams won’t always need the same version of data generated within an organization, but each data source will have many different consumers. Different use cases and requirements inform how each team visualizes each data type — DevOps will think more about traces and metrics, while security focuses more on correlation rules and alerting. No matter how it’s going to be used, data should be easily accessible by each team within your organization.

Pay Attention to Endpoint Data and High Volume Data Sources

Endpoints are often the path of least resistance into an organization, so it’s not surprising that this is where 70-80% of attacks originate. The number of endpoints to manage grew exponentially with IoT, Raspberry Pi, and the ease of getting anything online with a WiFi chip the size of your fingernail. But that number has exploded with remote work, so keeping a close eye on these sources is even more important now.

The security teams we talk to typically have a wish list of around 30 data sources they would onboard if they had the resources. The most common ones are VPC flow logs, DNS, web requests, cloud data, and other high-volume sources that are easy to hide exploits. If you have an incident, you need access to these sources to really understand what happened and trace attacks.

Embrace a Zero Trust Architecture

Zero trust is all about tying together your data from every system — everything from HR, security, IT, and even your physical security systems. Exclusion by default is one of the core tenets, so from a prevention perspective, all this data is important.

Collecting everything enables you to make smarter decisions about access because you can ask more intelligent questions beyond, “Is this person inside or outside the firewall” or “Do they have access to this application/system?”

With a zero-trust framework, you can dig deeper to find the answers to more complex questions about typical behavior. Does this user typically use this resource at this time? Do they have a good reason to use it? Have they used it before? Do they usually use these services together? These types of insights require input from all possible systems.

CrowdStream: Combining the Power of Cribl and Crowdstrike

Cribl and CrowdStrike have teamed up to help organizations keep up with data growth. With CrowdStream, you can gain full visibility over your data, hunt for threats and accelerate investigations. The new platform will also help organizations to ensure that their security logging doesn’t violate regulatory requirements.

CrowdStream lets you directly connect any data source to CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale using Cribl’s industry-leading technology. In a recent webcast, we discussed how Falcon LogScale and CrowdStream provide end-to-end observability and log management, from data collection to analysis and visualization.

Watch the full webinar to learn how to:

• Quickly collect data from a broad array of sources, accelerating deployment and time-to-value for log management.
• Enrich and normalize data to gain additional context and make data immediately actionable for security, IT, and compliance use cases.
• Cut costs by only forwarding the right data with CrowdStream and cost-effectively storing data for analysis and high-speed search with Falcon LogScale.

Cribl, the Data Engine for IT and Security, empowers organizations to transform their data strategy. Customers use Cribl’s suite of products to collect, process, route, and analyze all IT and security data, delivering the flexibility, choice, and control required to adapt to their ever-changing needs.

We offer free training, certifications, and a free tier across our products. Our community Slack features Cribl engineers, partners, and customers who can answer your questions as you get started and continue to build and evolve. We also offer a variety of hands-on Sandboxes for those interested in how companies globally leverage our products for their data challenges.