Is Your IT Infrastructure Safe? 5 Crucial Logs You Should Be Monitoring Right Now

With cyberattacks on the rise and system downtime costing businesses millions, relying on just firewalls and antivirus software is a gamble. If your organization depends on a secure IT infrastructure, proactive log management is your best bet to detect hidden threats and ensure system uptime. 

When implemented effectively, log management helps you spot issues before they escalate, detect anomalies, and even prevent cyberattacks. But not all logs are created equal. To keep your systems secure and running efficiently, here are the 5 crucial logs you need to start monitoring right now. 

Your IT infrastructure is only as strong as the hardware that powers it. From switches and routers to servers and access points, hardware logs provide invaluable insights into the performance and health of your physical devices. 

Monitoring these logs helps you: 

Tools like VirtualMetric allow you to track performance in real-time, automatically flagging any unusual activity that could compromise your infrastructure. For organizations with complex networks, monitoring hardware logs is the first line of defense in preventing outages and ensuring smooth operations.  

Your servers are the backbone of your IT environment, and their logs are a treasure trove of critical information. Whether you’re running on Linux or Windows servers, these logs tell you how your server is performing, what requests it’s handling, and, crucially, where things might be going wrong. 

Key benefits of monitoring server logs include: 

Server logs provide a detailed look at your infrastructure’s core, allowing you to make informed decisions that enhance both security and performance. 

Applications generate tons of log data, often offering insights into how end-users interact with your software. Application logs also serve as an essential tool for both troubleshooting and enhancing security. By analyzing these logs, you can uncover: 

Ignoring application logs can lead to missed opportunities for enhancing both security and user experience, and could leave your organization vulnerable to undetected breaches. 

In today’s security landscape, monitoring security logs is essential for protecting your organization against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. These logs are generated by your firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and can provide insights into: 

With VirtualMetric, security log monitoring becomes simple, providing real-time insights and alerts that keep your systems safe from intrusions. Security logs are critical for conducting forensic analysis after an attack, helping you understand the nature of the threat and how to prevent future incidents. 

With the increasing reliance on virtualization and cloud environments, Virtual Machine (VM) logs have become a crucial part of IT infrastructure monitoring. These logs provide insights into the performance of virtual machines, including: 

VM logs are especially important for large-scale environments where multiple VMs run simultaneously. By monitoring these logs, you can ensure that your virtual infrastructure is performing optimally and securely. 

If you’re still wondering whether you need to step up your IT infrastructure monitoring, consider this: logs offer a comprehensive view of what’s happening within your systems. Ignoring them leaves you blind to potential issues—security threats, hardware failures, or server crashes—that can lead to costly downtime, data breaches, and compliance violations. 

By consistently monitoring these 5 crucial logs, you’ll be better equipped to: 

Proactive log management doesn’t need to be overwhelming. With VirtualMetric, monitoring these critical logs becomes simple and automated. VirtualMetric offers real-time insights into your hardware, server, application, security, and VM logs, allowing you to safeguard your IT infrastructure against unforeseen risks.