A Dynamically Configurable Log-based Distributed Security Event Detection Methodology using Simple Event Correlator

Abstract

Log event correlation is an effective means of detecting system faults and security breaches encountered in information technology environments. Centralized, database-driven log event correlation is common, but suffers from flaws such as high network bandwidth utilization, significant requirements for system resources, and difficulty in detecting certain suspicious behaviors. This research presents a distributed event correlation system which performs security event detection, and compares it with a centralized alternative. The comparison measures the value in distributed event correlation by considering network bandwidth utilization, detection capability and database query efficiency, as well as through the implementation of remote configuration scripts and correlation of multiple log sources. These capabilities produce a configuration which allows a 99% reduction of network syslog traffic in the low-accountability case, and a significant decrease in database execution time through context-addition in the high-accountability case. In addition, the system detects every implemented malicious use case, with a low false positive rate