2007-10-24 00:49:49 -

www.enterprisestrategygroup.com - For Media Inquiries: Enterprise Strategy Group Jennifer Dwyer, 508-381-5179 Jennifer.Dwyer@enterprisestrategygroup.com or To Purchase the Report: Enterprise Strategy Group Taya Wyss, 949-723-3173 Taya.Wyss@enterprisestrategygroup.com The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), a leading information technology (IT) analyst firm focused on information storage, security and management, today announced the availability of a new research report, Security

Management Matures, a unique research study that examines the security management policies, procedures, and technologies at large organizations. ESG undertook this research project to assess how large organizations are managing security threats and to determine how security management practices complement regulatory compliance and IT operations efforts.

The new report is based upon a survey of 207 Information Security professionals responsible for evaluating, purchasing, and operating security management technologies at North American-based public and private organizations. Respondent organizations ranged in size from 1,000 to over 20,000 employees. The 49-page report includes data analysis presented in 35 figures and 9 tables.

The report uncovers an important trend: To analyze security events, regulatory compliance controls, and IT operations, large organizations are collecting a significant amount of log file data from security appliances, networking devices, and applications. Today's log data capacity will pale in comparison to impending requirements however, the report finds that large organizations will collect, store and analyze more log data from more sources in the very near future. For example:

-- More than 40% of large organizations collect at least 1TB (terabyte) of log data on a monthly basis while 11% collect more than 10TB of data each month. Additionally, nearly one-fourth of large organizations collect data from 1,000 or more sources (i.e. security, networking, and IT devices and applications).

-- More than one-fourth of large organizations expect that the number of sources (i.e. security, networking, and IT devices and applications) from which they collect log file data will "increase substantially" over the next 12 months.

-- The same growth pattern holds true with respect to total log data capacity. More than one-fourth of large organizations expect their log file data capacity to "increase substantially" over the next 12 months.

-- While log data growth is occurring across all market sectors, it is especially pronounced among the largest organizations. For example, nearly half of organizations with over 20,000 employees expect the number of log file sources to "increase substantially" over the next 12 months.

The explosive growth in log data is a result of several drivers. First, large organizations are collecting more data from more sources to gain a wider purview of security threats and their ramifications on IT infrastructure. Second, log data analysis is used beyond security threat management alone. Business managers, IT operations, compliance administrators, and "C-level" executives are increasingly using log data analysis to monitor numerous business and IT metrics. Finally, firms are archiving more log data for longer periods of time for future analysis or as liability protection in the event of a legal discovery.

"Security management needs have significantly increased the value of log data but ESG's research illustrates that analyzing log data provides benefits spanning across IT and the business," said Jon Oltsik, senior analyst at ESG and the author of this report. "With more data available, lots of people are using log data for all kinds of analysis. Security managers are doing forensic investigations, compliance officers are monitoring the effectiveness of controls, and IT operations administrators are tracking device configurations and troubleshooting problems. The cycle here is clear: More data leads to more analysis and more analysis leads to further business benefits and ROI."

The report concludes that the uncontrollable volume of log data growth will lead large organizations to build a dedicated log management architecture for log data collection, processing, and storage. It goes on to describe the technologies, services, and integration layers inherent in the ESG log management architecture vision. Oltsik comments: "The explosive growth in log data for security, compliance, IT management and business monitoring will lead to an inevitable situation where large organizations want to collect more and more data and analyze it in a variety of ways. This is exactly what is happening now. We are witnessing a paradigm shift where log file collection and processing becomes a discrete service-based architecture and acts as the foundation of a new IT-based data warehousing/business intelligence capability."

The report is now available. For more information about this report or ESG Research in general, please call 508-482-0188 or visit the ESG Web site at www.enterprisestrategygroup.com.

About Enterprise Strategy Group

Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) is a leading information technology (IT) analyst firm focused on the information storage, information security, information management and enterprise infrastructure markets. ESG provides strategic guidance and unmatched service to technology vendors, IT professionals, venture capitalists and institutional investors. Clients engage ESG for a variety of services including expert industry analysis, strategic consulting, market research and hands-on technology product testing and validation. For more information, please visit www.enterprisestrategygroup.com.

New Report Finds Log Data Analysis Supports a Growing Number of
Activities for Security, Compliance, IT Governance Management and IT
Operations

Report Predicts that Large Organizations Will Need a Dedicated Log
Management Architecture to Cope with Scaling Needs