Log browsing and filtering is one of the most frequent administrators’ tasks. That’s why we continuosly try to improve the workflows related to logs. In SMC 5.2 there are a few nice shortcuts that you can utilize when filtering the logs:
In StoneGate Management Center 5.2 the VPN troubleshooting tools have improved significantly. There are a lot of new drill-in actions available in System Status view. You can for example right-click any VPN tunnel in the VPN diagrams and drill-in to logs that flow through the selected tunnel. You can also right-click individual Gateways or Endpoints (from the Info panel) and drill-in to the related logs.
With StoneGate 5.2 you can save your log records to Local Archive Zip file. Just multi-select the records or define the time range and select Export – Export Log Events… from the right-click menu. That dialog contains now new option to save the log entries as zip file (in addition to XML, CSV and Archive).
Screen capture videos of StoneGate Management Center are featured in the "Huomenta Suomi" TV program from this morning. Click the picture below to view the recording of the program at MTV3′s Katsomo (unfortunately it is only in Finnish).
Those ones who do not understand Finnish, you can check the SMC video clips also here:
Enjoy!
As you know there are multiple ways how to visualize the log data with StoneGate Management Client. You have probably noticed the “Statistics” shortcuts in the Log Browser’s toolbar already. Here is another convenient way to find more log statistics shortcuts:

Just right-click any column header in the Log Browser and select some of the log statistics shortcuts from the menu that opens. Note that these shortcuts are all related to the column you originally selected.
A picture is worth a thousand words! Log Statistics provide you efficient tools to drill in to the relevant pieces of log data.
In SMC 5.0 there is one new shortcut that speeds up the daily administration tasks a bit. You can namely create new hosts wherever you see IP addresses. Just right-click that IP address and select “New Host” action from the menu that opens. This is a nice shortcut when you recognize some IP from the logs and you know you need to use a host element with that IP later e.g. in a security policy.

This article refers to previous post in which I illustrated how to create a logging profile to allow a 3rd party device syslog stream to be received by StoneGate Log Server.
I’ll deepen this information in this post by showing how to go from log collection to centralized log processing and reporting, using an Apache Web Server as log sending device. The ultimate goal is to use some parsed data from Web Server to create a basic report using StoneGate Reporting functionality included in StoneGate Management Center.
Did you know that StoneGate log events refer to each other? StoneGate Management Center 5.0 contains now even better support for different type of log references. With a single click you can drill-in to the related and referenced log events. Log references are now categorized and indexed that makes your log reference queries more efficient than ever.

The superior technical implementation allows the administrator to browse the log records on several abstraction layers and the system provides convenient shortcuts for navigating between the different layers. With a single click you can drill-in to 20 different types of related/referenced log event categories. In the Firewall logs, you can e.g. view all the records from the VPN connection the selected log event is using. In the IPS logs, you can easily view the Scan or DoS detection records that are related to the records you are currently viewing.


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