Log Management Comes to the Cloud

Managing logs is essentially the digital equivalent of taking of the trash. Nobody wants to do it, but if it doesn’t get done all kinds of stinky things can happen.

Now as part of moving applications to the cloud computing platform from Terremark, IT organizations can get someone else to manage their logs. Terremark has partnered with Tripwire to offer a log-management service on Terremark’s cloud platform.

Terremark will dedicate security professionals to monitor logs to look for any unusual events and to provide customers with reports to make sure systems in the Terremark cloud satisfy compliance regulations, said Robert Rounsavall, director of security at Terremark.

This service, noted Rounsavall, is fairly critical in an age where logs are becoming so large and unwieldy that trying to correlate system events to the log files is roughly akin to looking for a digital pin the proverbial haystack. That service can be provided on both the Terremark cloud and hosting services, and as a remote managed service for on-premise logs.

Compliance and security are among the reasons most cited by IT organizations for their reluctance to embrace cloud computing. But with the advent of more security and compliance services on cloud platforms, soon those cloud platforms will be more secure than what any one internal IT organization can do on its own.