Introduction to Disaster Recovery and it's Importance:
Disaster Recovery (DR) in a SIEM solution refers to the processes and infrastructure put in
place to ensure that security monitoring, log collection, and incident analysis can continue -
or be quickly restored - after an unexpected disruption such as a system failure, cyberattack,
or natural disaster. A well-designed DR strategy typically includes data replication, backup
SIEM instances, failover mechanisms, and clearly defined recovery time and recovery point
objectives. Its importance lies in maintaining continuous visibility into security events during
critical moments, preserving forensic data for investigations and compliance, and minimizing
downtime that could leave an organization blind to active threats.
Implementing Logsign for Disaster Recovery Operations:
To ensure business continuity and data availability, an additional Logsign server is deployed
at the Disaster Recovery (DR) site as part of the overall architecture. This DR server is
designed to act as a fallback system in the event of a failure at the primary site.
Archived data and signed data from the primary environment are automatically forwarded
to the DR site on a daily basis using scheduled Cron jobs. This automated process ensures
that the DR site consistently maintains up-to-date copies of critical data, reducing the risk of
data loss and enabling recovery when required.
In a worst-case scenario where all servers in the primary site become unavailable, the DR
site will still retain data from the previous day. This data already includes the necessary
archived and signed logs, allowing the organization to maintain access to historical logs and
evidence. While the failover process requires manual intervention, it is designed to ensure
continuity of operations with minimal downtime and allows data to be retrieved as needed
for investigation, compliance, or reporting purposes.
More specifically, indexes from the previous day are stored on the Logsign Server at the DR
site as cold data within the archive. If there is a requirement to make this archived data
searchable or usable as active indexes, the data can be restored using the Offline Report
feature offered on our platform, this feature enables cold archived data to be rewritten back
into index format on the DR site, ensuring that historical data remains accessible and can be
effectively utilized.
In summary, under this DR architecture, the only potential data loss is limited to the current
day’s index. All prior data remains preserved at the DR site, providing a reliable and
controlled recovery mechanism in the event of a primary site failure.
DR Activation Steps and Switchover Method:
Consider a situation that in the current setup, there is an active and fully operational server
running at the primary Data Center (DC). As part of the Disaster Recovery (DR)
implementation, a new server is deployed and prepared to function as the DR instance. All
required system resources, configurations, and settings from the primary server (including
indexed, archived, signed data, configurations, rules, dashboards, and users) are exported
and then imported into the DR server to ensure configuration consistency between both
environments.
Additional licensing is allocated to the DR server to enable it to operate independently
when required. Licensing requirements and implications should be reviewed and confirmed
in advance with the Logsign Sales Team to ensure compliance and readiness during a
switchover scenario.
Once the DR server is fully configured, it remains in a passive state. While it is not actively
processing data, all relevant resources remain attached and intact, allowing for a controlled
and predictable transition if needed, to keep the DR environment up to date, archive data is
periodically synchronized from the primary server to the DR server using secure file transfer
mechanisms such as rsync and scp. This regular data transfer ensures that the DR Server
maintains recent archived data and can be activated with minimal data loss and downtime
in the event of a disaster or planned switchover.
Prerequisites and Best Practices:
Before implementing or activating the Disaster Recovery (DR) solution, certain prerequisites
must be met to ensure a smooth and reliable recovery process. The DR server must be fully
provisioned with compatible hardware, operating system, and storage capacity to match the
primary environment. All configurations, resources, and integrations should be exported
from the primary system and successfully imported into the DR server. Appropriate licensing
must be assigned in advance and validated with the Sales Team to avoid delays during
activation. Additionally, secure network connectivity between the primary site and the DR
site must be established to support automated data transfers using tools such as rsync, scp,
or scheduled Cron jobs.
Best practices include regularly validating data synchronization jobs, monitoring transfer
logs, and performing periodic test recoveries to confirm that archived and signed data can
be restored and accessed correctly at the DR site. Configuration changes made in the
primary environment should be promptly replicated to the DR server to avoid drift, you can
refer to the KB Article below to know how easy it is to backup the configuration with
Logsign:Backup Management User Guide
It is also recommended to document and rehearse the manual intervention steps required
for DR activation so that operational teams can execute the switchover efficiently during an
actual incident.
Recovery Timelines and Potential Data Gaps:
Recovery timelines depend largely on the nature of the incident and the readiness of the DR
environment. In a full primary cluster failure scenario, the DR server can be brought online
once manual activation steps are completed and licensing is validated. Since archive and
signed data are synchronized on a daily basis, historical data up to the previous day is
already available at the DR site. If required, this data can be restored from cold archive into
searchable indexes using the Offline Report feature, which may add additional time
depending on data volume and system performance.
The primary potential data gap is limited to the current day’s index, as this data may not yet
have been archived or transferred at the time of failure. No other historical data loss is
expected, provided that scheduled data transfer jobs have been running successfully.