How Log Management and NDR Work Together to Speed Up Incident Response

Log management and Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions are closely related but offer different layers of visibility. Rather than overlapping, they complement each other, together providing a connected view of what’s happening in your environment. How exactly? Let’s take a closer look.

Quick Recap of Why Logs Matter

Log files, often referred to simply as logs, are structured or semi-structured records that capture the state and activity of systems. They are generated by almost every component of the IT environment, from operating systems and applications to network devices, security tools and cloud platforms.

Because logs come from many different sources and serve a variety of purposes, their format and content can vary widely. Still, most logs include several common elements such as a timestamp, source, user or process ID, status code, event type and hostname. They can also include a severity level to indicate the urgency or importance of an event.

Logs are sometimes seen as a necessary evil since their retention is required by several cybersecurity laws and standards. It’s because it allows aggregating i.e. authentication logs, audit trails and policy change records, so that analysts can identify suspicious behavior, validate incidents and generate evidence for standards like ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR or NIS2.

As a result, logs are often viewed as merely a checkbox item for IT compliance.

However, they provide far more value than compliance alone. They offer administrators and security teams irreplaceable insights that support a wide range of day-to-day operational and investigative tasks.

Common Use Cases for Log Management in Security

To make use of diverse and inconsistent log sources, organizations rely on a process called log management. It involves collecting, normalizing and storing logs in a centralized, searchable platform.

Without it, teams would need to manually check logs on each individual device, application or service after something goes wrong. And they would be spending precious time sifting through inconsistent, unstructured data to find answers.

To avoid that headache, most organizations use dedicated log management tools or broader platforms with log collection capabilities, such as Security Information & Event Management (SIEM) tools. These solutions are critical for both security operations and troubleshooting. They allow for centralized, real-time monitoring, support advanced log analysis and offer alerting features.

These tools can automatically trigger alerts when certain thresholds are crossed or patterns are detected, including many failed login attempts, a sudden surge in error messages or unusual traffic from a single IP address. These alerts are then forwarded to other systems such as SIEM tools for correlation and threat detection, or to response tools like SOAR and XDR for automated handling.

When done correctly, log management is helpful in several use cases, such as:

• Troubleshooting and root cause analysis - When something breaks, a service crashes, performance slows down, or users can’t connect, logs are often the first place to look.
• Performance monitoring - Operations teams can use log data to track latency, memory use and error rates, helping them fine-tune performance and plan for capacity upgrades.
• Security monitoring and threat detection - Security analysts rely on logs to detect unusual or unauthorized activity.
• Incident response and forensics - During and after a security incident, logs help reconstruct what happened. Investigators can identify the attacker’s path, determine which systems were affected and assess the impact. Comprehensive log retention also maintains traceability long after the initial event.

Logs and Flows; Different Data, Same Goal

Log data and network flow data tell different sides of the same story, and together they give security teams a far more complete view of what’s going on.

Logs provide detailed insight into what’s happening inside systems, who logged in, what processes ran or who made the changes. Flow data, on the other hand, shows how those systems are behaving on the network, what they’re connecting to, what volume of data they’re sending and where that data is going.

Looking at just one side may create gaps. You might see in the logs that a new user account was created or that a script executed something unusual, but without flow data, you’d have no idea that the machine also started sending traffic to an unfamiliar external address.

Or flip the scenario. Flow data could reveal a large outbound transfer from a database server to an unknown external IP, but unless you check the logs, you might not know which user account triggered it or whether it was just a scheduled backup.

Used together, logs and flows provide both the context and the activity trail. Logs explain the “who” and “how,” while flows give you the “what” and “where.” That combination helps you spot threats faster and understand incidents more clearly.

Integrating Log Management and NDR for Enhanced Visibility

Integrating NDR with a log management system essentially combines their strengths.

Log management platforms like Logmanager are great at capturing and indexing events across your environment, things like logins, file access or system changes, while Progress Flowmon NDR provides real-time insights into how devices are behaving on the network.

When you combine them, you get both context and visibility, which makes it easier to move from alert to action (response).

Say your NDR flags a host for scanning multiple internal systems or pushing data to an unusual external address. On its own, that’s useful, but once you correlate it with log data, things become clearer. You might notice the same host had a strange login or installed new software shortly before the behavior started. Now you’re seeing a connected chain of events, not just isolated signals.

This kind of correlation fills in detection gaps. It surfaces activity that might look harmless in logs or flows alone, but when viewed together tells a different story. For analysts, that means fewer dead ends and more high-confidence alerts, with enough built-in context to investigate quickly and accurately.

Overall, the combined approach offers to security operations teams:

Faster Threat Detection and Response

With two complementary detection engines (log-based and network behavior analytics) feeding into one workflow, threats are spotted sooner and confirmed faster. Joint analysis shortens the time from an initial alert to actionable understanding.

Better Context and Visibility

Merging log and flow data provides rich context that neither alone can offer. Analysts gain a clear, 360° view of an incident, seeing both what happened on the systems and how it played out across the network. This clarity makes it easier to distinguish real threats from benign events.

Reduced False Positives

Integration leads to smarter alerts. Behavioral detections from NDR are cross-checked with log insights (and vice versa), resulting in high-fidelity alerts that carry evidence from multiple angles. This reduces noise and alert fatigue.

More Precise Investigations and Root Cause Analysis

When an incident occurs, having all the data in one place accelerates analysis. There’s no need to manually pull logs from servers while separately dumping traffic data. Analysts can pivot quickly and drill down into both log details and network evidence to identify what happened. This efficiency not only saves time but often is the difference in uncovering the full root cause. It also means less reliance on guesswork; conclusions are backed by both sets of data, which is crucial for incident handling, post-incident reporting and lessons learned.

Flowmon and Logmanager Together: Context-Enriched Detection for Faster Incident Response

In a world of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, relying on just one type of data is a recipe for blind spots.

By bringing log management tools and NDR together, organizations get together two of the most important data sources for security operations.

Integrating NDR into your logging ecosystem means analysts can see the full story of an attack. This not only leads to faster detection and containment of attacks, but also a deeper understanding of threats (supporting efforts like threat hunting and continuous improvement of defenses). The end result is a more resilient security posture.

Logmanager and Flowmon NDR allows a seamless integration of log and flow data to provide you with complete visibility needed to detect modern threats, along with the context to respond decisively.