Grafana Loki vs. LogRhythm NextGen SIEM Platform

Grafana Loki can compile data logs for easy exploration of a service and enable quick troubleshooting and error tracing for engineers who may not have deeper access. However, Loki is dependent on the service logging complexity, which, depending on the logger, may not be robust enough and limit the value offered.

Incentivized

LogRhythm is good for providing a comprehensive view of the environment. It gives a great outline of whatever is going on in our servers and systems regarding security malfunctions. The SIEM sends real-time notifications when there are some occurrences; like creating a new user and inappropriate login attempts. It also avails a good use case that meets our HIPAA compliance.

Incentivized

• Access to many open-source dashboards, access to add many data-sources to gather and visualize data from.
• Grafana Loki does well gathering of logs from various data-sources, we can also filter the logs based on our needs.
• One stop solution for all the logs and monitoring.

Incentivized

• LogRhythm NextGen SIEM Platform has an alarm system that generates tickets based on the event and the way it has been configured in the LogRhythm console. Let's say we have a ticket for a malicious email attachment. The ticket will some information like the source of the log, the source IP, destination IP etc. It can be drilled down to obtain specific information like the recipient, source location, file attachment name, SHA hash of the file, source and destination port, time, mac address of the machine that downloaded it etc. This helps the analysts to go to the root of the cause and take actions easily without manually parsing them.
• The second good thing about the LogRhythm NextGen SIEM Platform is that it is very easy to use with its well-structured interface. To use LogRhythm, an user barely require any technical skills. A little overview of IP, CIDR, hash, etc. is enough to get your hands on it. It requires no programming or coding skills, as everything is GUI based. It also provides a beautiful visualization dashboard. There is another beautiful feature that it provides for the classification of events, known as cases. Multiple users working on the same platform can create cases and add events to it. They also help to maintain future reference.
• The third good feature is the search tool which is very powerful. For example, sometimes it is hard to find the users who downloaded a malware from the guest wireless of the institution and not the private network. The search tool helps us in searching the user by automatically correlating the MAC address from the current network logs and the previous logs as the MAC address is the same. It is highly scalable for parsing a large number of logs from various sources.
• I particularly think this is one of the best software available for log parsing in an organization where non-technical users are working on incident response. This tool has a good amount of flexibility. However, it can only be configured with the LogRhythm NextGen SIEM Platform Console.
• In terms of usability, as already mentioned, it is a very easy tool to use, with a GUI based interface.

Incentivized

• Offer log suggestions.
• Offer basic query syntax check.
• Offer data range controls.

Incentivized

• LogRhythm absolutely needs to provide back end support for threat intelligence lists. Performing a linear search on massive lists of IPs on incoming web traffic can bring the SIEM to its knees.
• LogRhythm should drop its entire code base for implementing lists and simply turn them into hash tables to avoid the excessive cost associated with referencing lists in rules. I haven't seen the code, but the performance suggests O(n).
• The reporting feature is the worst of all SIEMs, luckily reports are not my primary service offering. LogRhythm should definitely revamp its reporting to be more intuitive.

Incentivized

LogRhythm is focused on SIEM. That is their core business. Cost of operations, feature set and ease of use. The Log Rhythm support team is outstanding. Overall reliability is good. Reporting module needs some improvement and LR is promising that there will be significant improvements in future releases.

Incentivized

Grafana Loki makes accessing and viewing service logs easy for engineers who may not be familiar with going into service. However, useability can be limited if engineers are unaware of what the queries should look like or where in the service to direct Loki to look for logging.

Incentivized

LogRhythm does a rather decent job of making the functionality advanced (allowing for advanced keyword & field searching, use of "AND" as well as "OR" statements in the search bar) while keeping it accessible (by not requiring a specific syntax to do quick searches). This combined with a user interface that has headings and labels that are intuitive is very helpful.

Incentivized

While LogRhythm support is generally quick to respond, the initial response is usually from a first line support engineer with general knowledge of the product. Any advanced or complex issues have always required the assistance of a higher tier of support, directly or indirectly. For a few occasions we actually used our PS hours to work on the issue.

Incentivized

• Buy professional services.
• Buy and implement the system if possible.
• Remember that the end point log configuration may require other teams in your company to assist you in getting the desired logs from all resources.
• Attend the end user and daily operations training after a period of usage so you are not overwhelmed with information on concepts not yet seen.
• Don't be afraid to call for help during your first months of use.
• Don't close any ticket until you are sure the expected results are verified.
• Use the community forums to discuss issues with your peers.
• Watch the training videos offered by L R University.

Incentivized

First and foremost if Grafana Loki is based on CNCF open source projects so organizations can get freedom to choice to configure it at your own other main thing is Grafana Loki is totally free of cost and we can deploy it on our infrastructure. On compared with other managed services like Datadog, New Relic it is very expensive and we also don't have much control on the tools we use.

Incentivized

LogRhythm was simpler to set up and configure as well as extract information from. It also was less intrusive in terms of how many appliances were needed to implement. We were up and running within 5 hours to start accepting log sources. We selected LogRhythm as well since support is based in the USA in Colorado.

Incentivized

• Only indexes the metadata
• Have to manage it by ourselves compare to other available managed monitoring and log observability solutions
• Dedicated person or team of SRE to manage the monitoring and observability solutions

Incentivized

• The ability to search through logs in a centralized location really helps us to provide RCA (Root Cause Analysis) to management for outages. This helps us to quickly identify the cause of outages and thus saves money due to reduced downtime.
• Being able to configure the alarms to provide real-time notification (and responses) to security events helps to prevent potential loss due to compromises (such as a fraudulent wire transfer).
• The initial investment in LogRhythm SIEM is somewhat expensive, however, the appliance is built to your specific needs so you won't have to constantly be upgrading the device as your company grows.

Incentivized