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Preserving Security Logs

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We are working with a customer which had an internal security breach. Now we are required to put safe-guards into place for them. Here is the problem.....
First, the background.
There are 7 network administrators and all have access to the Domain (2000 w/ AD) administrator's account. No one else knows this account and no one, other than these 7, know the password. A couple of weeks ago, on a Saturday night, someone connected via VPN using the domain administrator's account. Network monitoring caught this person using the internet for "non-company" purposes and there is a specific "written" company policy against the activity which they were doing. From the WINS database, we were able to determine the name of the computer being used to connect, and therefore pin-point the specific person. When confronted, they admitted the action and are not being delt with, according to the written policy.
Second, the problem.
On the server which was used for the VPN, the security log was deleted, about the same time that this activity (above) was being done. Suspicion would point to the same person. However, we have no way of proving whether this individual, or some other administrator, deleted this particular log. The domain logs were set to a small size and have been written over.
The deletion of a server log has the company managers, just plain livid. (and that is saying it kindly) They are wanting some method in place where the server log files can be copied or kept to prevent such information from coming up "missing".
In this question, I am not interested in all of the other things that can be done to prevent this from happening. We are ONLY interested (with this question) to preserving all the log files. Does anyone have a method where files can be kept safe, in real-time? Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks.

Michael R.

9 replies

by rabbit_runner

Sorry about the typo..
When confronted, they admitted the action and are NOW being delt with, according to the written policy.

by rabbit_runner

This has some potential. It may provide some help but I am not certain if it will answer the question of keeping log files safe from deletion. However, the tool is quite intriging.

by curlergirl

The actual event log files are in the %systemroot%\system32\config folder. If you back up that folder on a regular basis, then you should be able to recover any of the server logs from a backup at any point in time. You can only view these logs from the Event Viewer program itself, but once you've restore the log file you should be able to open it from the viewer.

Hope this helps!

by rabbit_runner

What you say is correct, however it will not meet our requirements. If the log files are saved each morning, and someone deletes the logs during the night, all required information will be lost.

I am looking for more suggestions. Does anyone else have other ideas? Thanks

by rabbit_runner

'dpetrak', I like your suggestion and it will be considered. At the same time, everyone, are there additional suggestions or solutions? We are needing several possibilities from which to make our best choice.

If anyone has other suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

by dbowlin

If you are running AD then you have a separate Enterprise Admin account.

You can change the location of the logs to a folder where only the Enterprise Admin has permission to view or edit or delete for that matter.

Make sure the Enterprise Admin has a separate password that is known only to the manager, and perhaps 1 domain admin.

Good Luck
Dan

by rabbit_runner

Your basic answer is to limit the access to the event log files. This would create a great political problem with the staff, but it would be fairly inexpensive.

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