What is log analysis?

Log analysis is analyzing and recording log files to acquire information about a system's behavior, performance, and security. To detect malicious activity, log analysis can employ a variety of approaches such as log correlation, forensic analysis, and cyber threat intelligence.

What is log analysis software?

A log analysis software needs to: - Log collection: Gather log data from multiple sources, such as servers, applications, and databases. - Centralized log management: Assist with mapping, categorization, and tagging logs in a centralized form. - Log search and query capabilities: Allow users to search and filter logs.

Why do you need log analysis software?

The problem: Analyzing and gaining visibility into system logs serves as the foundational tool for protecting your critical data and detecting abnormal activities. However, merely ingesting terabytes of log data is futile without the right tools to efficiently parse, collect relevant log data, and detect anomalies. How log analysis helps: Effective log analysis enables you to know when and where to act, allowing for well-planned remediation strategies. While monitoring every IoT device on your network may be impractical, you can streamline your asset inventory and focus on the areas that matter most. For instance, monitoring your most vulnerable areas allows you to gather threat intelligence for limiting gateway restrictions to limit data loss. With log analysis you can also identify whether a malicious actor is moving laterally through your network by analyzing unusual login attempts, helping you minimize breaches.

Why do companies use log analysis?

Companies may use log analysis to find errors, trends, patterns, and anomalies, that can help you understand how your system works. Various sources create logs, including operating systems, applications, databases, servers, and network devices. Each source has a unique format and structure for recording data. For example, web server logs will contain information regarding requests made to the server, such as: -IP addresses -Session ID -Timestamps (encoded information identifying when a certain event occurred)

- Access logs: Every request made to a server is recorded in an access log, which includes information such as IP addresses, and timestamps. These logs are critical for analyzing user activity, monitoring traffic trends, and detecting possible security issues. For example, a rapid rise in requests from a single IP address may signal a DDoS threat. - Error logs: Error logs record incidents in which something went wrong with a system or application. This might involve lost files or crashing apps. Companies may examine such logs to identify errors and fix them before they escalate. - Event logs: Event logs record major system events such as user logins, initialization, and configuration changes. Event logs can assist you in monitoring access requests.

Cybersecurity Security Tools

Top 10 Log Analysis Software for Data Security

Name: Top 10 Log Analysis Software For Data Security
Description: Log analysis software gathers, parses, and analyzes log data from several sources, including servers, network devices, and apps. System

Cem Dilmegani

with Mert Palazoğlu

updated on Jul 25, 2025

See our ethical norms

Log analysis software gathers, parses, and analyzes log data from several sources, including servers, network devices, and apps. System administrators use log analysis software for monitoring & debugging systems and analyzing system performance.

Here are the top 10 log analysis software based on my & other users’ experiences and vendor features. Follow the links to see vendors’ best practices:

Vendor

Focus

ManageEngine Log360

-Security information and event management (SIEM)

Dynatrace

-Enterprise monitoring

LogicMonitor LM Logs

-Log analysis

DataDog

-Security information and event management (SIEM) -Enterprise monitoring

New Relic

-Enterprise monitoring

Vendors focusing on enterprise monitoring

These vendors offer:

infrastructure monitoring
application performance monitoring (APM)
log analysis capabilities

They can help SOCs monitor infrastructure or application topologies to identify bottlenecks, hence these vendors are essential debugging solutions for enterprise-wide actions.

Vendors focusing on log analysis

Vendors focusing on log analysis are also essential debugging solutions since they correlate log data to identify and pinpoint the underlying causes of issues.

However, compared to enterprise monitoring vendors, they provide less visibility (lack infrastructure and application performance monitoring (APM)).

Vendors focusing on SIEM

Vendors focusing on SIEM aim to collect log data from IT applications, systems, and technical infrastructure, they can generate useful operational information and alert incident response teams.

However, they are ineffective for context-based troubleshooting since they do not provide any instrumentation to monitor infrastructure or application issues.

Note: Buyers already using enterprise monitoring software (e.g. APM tool) can integrate machine and log data to your SIEM platform for context-based log analysis.

Market presence and feature comparison

Vendor	Average rating	# of employees
ManageEngine Log360	4.5 based on 22 reviews	387
Dynatrace	4.4 based on 1,494 reviews	5,018
LogicMonitor LM Logs	4.5 based on 843 reviews	1,122
Datadog	4.4 based on 775 reviews	7,401
New Relic	4.3 based on 614 reviews	2,727
Sumo Logic	4.2 based on 314 reviews	901
Splunk Enterprise Security	4.3 based on 293 reviews	9,229
Graylog Enterprise	4.3 based on 164 reviews	132
SolarWinds Observability SaaS	4.3 based on reviews 146	2,625
Coralogix	4.8 based on 143 reviews	359

See vendor selection criteria.

SOAR: Vendors with (security orchestration, automation, and response) SOAR, and (user and entity behavior analytics). For more: Top 10+ SOAR software.

Insights (below) come from our experience with these solutions as well as other users’ experiences shared in Gartner ¹, G2², and TrustRadius³

ManageEngine Log360

Source: ManageEngine⁴

ManageEngine Log360 is a SIEM platform that provides log analysis and helps streamline security center operations. The solution supports help desk software integrations with Jira Service Desk, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Kayako, and ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus.

ManageEngine Log360 enriches log analysis with several key features, combining monitoring, threat detection, and response capabilities:

Threat detection by leveraging integrated data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities.
(User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) by monitoring the log data to establish patterns in your network.
Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) by conducting incident investigation and response.

For example, users who are looking to investigate logs can use Log360’s predefined attack patterns to define unique rules, set time intervals, and apply filters.

Furthermore, Log360’s forensic analysis capabilities users can locate the point of attack in the network to see which network component is exploited.

Source: ManageEngine⁵

Additionally, the solution supports help desk software integrations with Jira Service Desk, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Kayako, and ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus.

Choose ManageEngine Log360 to support your log management operations with SEM enrichment.

Dynatrace

Dynatrace is an application performance monitoring software for infrastructure observability with log data analytics. Dynatrace provides ingest support for more than 600 log sources including:

Native integration with all AWS services
Support for common log sources such as Syslogs, networking, Fluent Bit, and FluentD
API integration for Azure and Google Cloud

With Dynatrace you can utilize a log distribution dashboard, powerful search, and customized filters that don’t require a query language.

Additionally, Dynatrace enhances log management and analysis by integrating the Davis AI assistant, which provides automation and actionable insights. With Davis, you can:

Pre-process of common log formats, such as JSON, for improved search and filtering capabilities
Describe logs using natural language

LogicMonitor LM Logs

Source: LogicMonitor⁶

LogicMonitor LM logs provide numerous options to collect log data into the LM Envision anomaly detection platform for monitoring and analysis. With LogicMonitor LM Logs you can display log events and anomalies which may be analyzed using keyword search and filtering.

It is especially well-suited for enterprises with distributed IT infrastructures since it can monitor and manage IT systems across multiple sites and data centers. LogicMonitor LM logs can monitor and collect logs from:

Networks
Servers
Virtual machines
SD-WANs
SaaS platforms
Websites
Databases

During the log ingestion processes, LogicMonitor LM Logs analyzes log files, transforming raw data into actionable insights. LogicMonitor can:

Forward Syslog logs using standard TCP protocols. (across network devices, firewalls, routers, and switches.
Forward Syslog logs from Unix-based systems. (across Linux servers)
Forward logs from Kubernetes clusters (across containers – kubernetes)

Datadog

Source: Datadog⁷

Datadog is a cloud-based monitoring and analytics software Datadog collects log data from various sources, including servers, databases, cloud services, containers, and apps. Enterprise DevOps uses Datadog to monitor their infrastructure, apps, and logs and support cloud SIEM operations.

With Datadog users can leverage drag-and-drop capabilities to create log analytics dashboards to view log data in context using auto-tagging and metric correlation

For example, IT operations teams can assess the percentage of service logs that include errors. Any query’s results may be shown as top lists, or time-series graphs.

Additionally, Datadog’s log recommendation engine, the “Watchdog Insights tool” can notify teams if a certain host, service, or log asset displays unusually high errors. This helps on-call engineers and incident specialists navigate investigations involving new systems.

New Relic

New Relic is a monitoring platform. It also offers log tracking & analysis of your applications, infrastructure, and web browsers.

With New Relic users can gain visibility into application and infrastructure data (logs received, log errors, etc). Also, on the New Relic main logs UI page, you can see all of your logs and then filter down to logs with specified content.

Sumo Logic

Source: Sumo Logic⁸

Sumo Logic offers cloud monitoring, log management, and cloud SIEM capabilities. The solution provides detailed network insights for compliance, you can visualize inbound network activity based on host IPs for audits.

Splunk Enterprise Security

Splunk Enterprise Security is a SIEM solution that collects data from several sources, including log files, and network traffic.

It categorizes and saves data in a searchable format. This allows users to leverage SPL (Search Processing Language), to identify particular events, trends, or anomalies in log data.

For example, with Splunk Enterprise users can execute several log investigations, such as investigating decoded HTTP requests. The below example shows that the majority of the access was performed by the suspicious php file “cc8356c82af96ee7994175bb86a8da87.php”

Source: Moore, Kevin⁹

Additionnaly, Splunk Enterprise Security offers a feature called “Log Observer Connect“, a cloud observability service, that allows you to pull log data from your Splunk Platform.

Graylog

Graylog Enterprise offers log management for IT Operations and DevOps teams. The product also has integrations with Graylog Security SIEM for security & event management.

With Graylog users can utilize log analysis with charts and graphs to highlight relationships and similarities between events and data. For example, display endpoint events by event type. Users can also display event details (e.g. source, timestamp).

Source: Graylog Enterprise¹⁰

SolarWinds Observability SaaS

SolarWinds Observability SaaS is an observability platform used by DevOps, IT ops, and Cloud Ops teams. The product offers:

Log Monitoring
Application monitoring (specializes in Java application monitoring)
Kubernetes monitoring
Network monitoring
Website monitoring

Offers database integrations for:

MongoDB
MySQL
PostgreSQL
Amazon Aurora

With SolarWinds Observability SaaS users can collect log data from websites, network devices, and virtual machines or AWS for centralized visibility.

Source: SolarWinds¹¹

Users can use the search box to find, filter, and analyze logs. Logs Explorer only shows logs that match the syntax.

Source: SolarWinds¹²

For more detailed insights you can utilize the trends graph to reveal trends in the quantity of logs received at certain periods.

Source: SolaWinds¹³

Coralogix

Coralogix is a SaaS platform for log analysis, SIEM, and application performance management. Coralogix has 300+ integrations spanning monitoring, DevOps, security, collaboration, and cloud services:

Monitoring and logging: Logstash, Prometheus, Fluent Bit, Kubernetes, Amazon CloudWatch, GCP Log Explorer, AWS Lambda, AWS S3
Collaboration and communication: Slack, Microsoft Teams, JIRA
CI/CD and DevOps tools: CircleCI, Jenkins, GitHub, OTel (OpenTelemetry)
Security: CrowdStrike Falcon, Cortex XSOAR, PagerDuty

With Coralogix you can use lookup tables to convert these codes into meaningful explanations to increase your observability.

Source: Coralogix¹⁴

Moreover, with Coralogix analysts may get additional context by adding information from lookup tables directly into log entries. This helps detect unauthorized access with log lookup tables. For example, the lookup table can provide information on the cloud resource’s sensitivity level (based on AWS resource tags).

Source: Coralogix¹⁵

Log analysis methods

Log normalization

Log normalization involves converting logs from different formats into a consistent, standardized format. This allows for easier analysis and comparison across several systems and log sources.

For example, correlating access logs with error logs from specific IP addresses could help identify when an error occurs during a specific user’s session. This is especially critical for troubleshooting issues and tracing them to their root cause.

Pattern recognition

Pattern recognition helps identify anomalies or outliers. For example, if a system experiences a sudden traffic spike, pattern recognition could detect this deviation (e.g. a DDoS attack).

Log monitoring

Log monitoring automates the detection of anomalies in logs and provides real-time alerts. For example, log monitoring software could flag unusual login attempts, possibly indicating a brute force attack, or alert administrators to a spike in system errors caused by a software bug.

System performance analysis

System performance analysis examines logs to reveal system performance metrics like CPU usage, memory utilization, and network traffic. For instance, high CPU usage logs could reveal a need for resource optimization or network logs could point to bandwidth bottlenecks.

Vendor selection criteria

Number of reviews: 100+ total reviews
Average rating: Above 4.0/5
Number of employees: 100+

FAQ

Reference Links

Gartner | Delivering Actionable, Objective Insight to Executives and Their Teams

Gartner

Bewertungen von Geschäftssoftware und -diensten | G2

TrustRadius: Software Reviews, Software Comparisons and More

TrustRadius

Log360's Application log analytics- ManageEngine

LM Logs Overview | LogicMonitor

LogicMonitor

Log Analysis Tools | Datadog

Get started with log management | New Relic Documentation

Log Analysis Using Splunk. The incident response process is… | by Kevin Moore | Medium

Medium

10.

What Is Log Management? A Complete Logging Guide

Graylog

11.

Log Monitoring and Management Software | SolarWinds

12.

SolarWinds Observability | Logs Explorer

13.

SolarWinds Observability | Logs Explorer

14.

Lookup Tables and Log Analysis: Extracting Insight from Logs - Coralogix

Coralogix

15.

Lookup Tables and Log Analysis: Extracting Insight from Logs - Coralogix

Coralogix

Principal Analyst

Cem Dilmegani

Principal Analyst

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Cem has been the principal analyst at AIMultiple since 2017. AIMultiple informs hundreds of thousands of businesses (as per similarWeb) including 55% of Fortune 500 every month.

Cem's work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte, HPE and NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission. You can see more reputable companies and resources that referenced AIMultiple.

Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised enterprises on their technology decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization.

He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.

Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

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Researched by

Mert Palazoğlu

Industry Analyst

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Mert Palazoglu is an industry analyst at AIMultiple focused on customer service and network security with a few years of experience. He holds a bachelor's degree in management.

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