Which logging practice can enhance security incident investigations?

Normalizing data formats enhances security incident investigations by ensuring that log data from different sources is standardized and consistent. When logs are normalized, they present uniform data that can be easily analyzed and correlated across different systems, applications, and devices. This uniformity allows security analysts to quickly identify patterns, trends, or anomalies during investigations.

For instance, if log entries from various firewalls, servers, or applications follow different formats, analyzing them together becomes cumbersome and error-prone. Normalization makes it easier to automate the log analysis process, which can significantly speed up incident response times and enhance overall security monitoring efforts.

While other practices like storing logs for a short duration, restricting access, and eliminating redundant log entries have their own importance, they do not directly contribute to the clarity and ease of analysis that normalization provides. Understanding and correlating diverse log data is crucial for effectively investigating security incidents.