Security and compliance management vendor ArcSight today launched the latest version of its Logger appliance, designed to provide smaller firms with all the log data they need to investigate and forensically analyse IT-related criminal activity.

AcrSight Logger 4 enables firms to collect, store and analyse IT operations, user and application data, both structured and unstructured, across the organisation, according to the firm's vice president of product marketing Rick Caccia.

The system features more pre-built reports, along with enhanced capacity of up to 42TB of data on a single appliance, which can amount to seven years' worth of information for some companies.

"We're seeing two trends in the marketplace. Cyber security incidents, whether internal or external, are moving downstream to the smallest firms, and customers are demanding their log records to be held in a single place. At the moment they are split between security and IT management products," he said.

AcrSight Logger 4 can be used to investigate possible internal or external attacks, thereby reducing the impact of online crime, and can also ensure the smooth running of IT operations, according to Caccia. In this way, Logger 4 enables cheaper and more efficient auditing and reporting which can help to boost compliance efforts.

Many of ArcSight's customers come from highly regulated industries such as government and banking, and the product fully supports the Federal Information Processing Standards and Common Access Card for criminal investigation and prosecution.