Alerting On Quiet Log Sources

Data sources that stop logging to your SIEM put your organization at risk. If one of your organization’s firewalls stops logging to the SIEM, your SOC will be blind to malicious traffic traversing it. If your endpoint protection application stops logging, your analysts won’t be able to see if malicious files are being executed on one of your billing servers.

In a perfect world, your SIEM should alert when any data source stops logging to your SIEM. While this is feasible in smaller organizations, it can become daunting in large organizations. It’s easier for your SOC to follow up with one system owner who sits a few cubicles over than with 100 system owners from different lines of businesses. The task of remediating several hundred systems not logging to a SIEM can easily consume an entire resource. In large organizations, network outages, system upgrades and maintenance windows can be a regular occurrence. Should you alert on any data source that stops logging to your SIEM in a predefined period, you could easily end up flooding your SOC, and in a worst case scenario, your analysts will develop a practice of ignoring these alerts.

As a best practice, especially in large organizations, a SIEM should be configured to alert when critical data sources stop logging. The data sources should at minimum include critical servers to the business (e.g. client-facing applications), firewalls, proxies, and security applications. A threshold of less than an hour in your organization may generate excessive alerts, as some sources that are file-based may be delayed by design, for example by copying the file to the SIEM every 30 minutes. However, data sources that haven’t logged in one hour may warrant an alert in your organization.

Another thing to consider when remediating systems not logging to the SIEM is that malware experts and threat intelligence specialists may not be the best resources to chase system owners down. While they may not mind the odd alert for this, they’re not likely going to have time to chase down and get 100 system owners to configure their systems properly, or have the patience to continuously follow up with them. Thus, in larger organizations, project management may be a good fit for this task.

Having all your systems log to your SIEM is a critical part of reducing your organization’s risk. Having a practical, manageable task for remediating systems that stop logging will ensure the process is followed and the risk is reduced.