Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter
9
effective Application
Monitoring: Security Logging
for Web Applications
Logging and management of Web applications have assumed much importance, as logging can
reveal many aspects, including security attacks, compromises, hacking, and the like. Logging for
security, therefore, has become the need of the hour. Logging is an I/O-intensive operation and
has a great bearing on performance and cost. he application developers need to appropriately
choose logging options so that they strike a right chord between cost, performance, and policies
of governmental and industrial bodies. he Java platform provides comprehensive logging APIs
that help application developers appropriately model the logging requirements, classify them into
speciic levels of severity, and publish the same after appropriately formatting and localization.
9.1 the Importance of Logging for Web Applications—A Primer
9.1.1 Overview of Logging and Log Management
A
logging operation
can be deined as
a
mechanism of recording speciic events occurring within a
system or network. Organizations all over the world have several systems, applications, and net-
works performing business functions on a daily basis. A log contains a record of a set of speciic
events chronologically occurring within the system or network, as a part of the business process
activities. For instance, a irewall would log information about packets dropped from a particular
host or IP range. Another instance is a directory server, which logs failure of user access attempts
into the system. Logs were traditionally used for troubleshooting purposes. Network devices,
operating systems, and application logs were used by support personnel to troubleshoot speciic
issues that were adversely afecting their operations. Logs are also used for checking the health or
status of a particular device or appliance in the organization's network. For instance, if an orga-
nization has a mission-critical server requiring maximum uptime, logs are consistently monitored
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