Logging and reporting can help you determine what is happening on your network, as well as informing you of certain network activity, such as the detection of a virus, or IPsec VPN tunnel errors. Logging and reporting go hand in hand, and can become a valuable tool for information gathering, as well as displaying the activity that is happening on the network.

Your FortiManager device collects logs from managed FortiGate, FortiCarrier, FortiMail, and FortiWeb devices, and FortiClient endpoint agents. On FortiMail you can view history, event, antivirus, and email filter logs. On FortiWeb you can view event logs. On FortiGate and FortiCarrier you can view traffic, event, and security logs.

Traffic logs record the traffic that is flowing through your FortiGate unit. Since traffic needs firewall policies to properly flow through the unit, this type of logging is also referred to as firewall policy logging. Firewall policies control all traffic that attempts to pass through the FortiGate unit, between FortiGate interfaces, zones and VLAN sub-interfaces.

The event log records administration management as well as Fortinet device system activity, such as when a configuration has changed, or admin login or HA events occur. Event logs are important because they record Fortinet device system activity, which provides valuable information about how your Fortinet unit is performing. The FortiGate event logs includes System, Router, VPN, and User menu objects to provide you with more granularity when viewing and searching log data.

Security logs (FortiGate) record all antivirus, web filtering, application control, intrusion prevention, email filtering, data leak prevention, and VoIP activity on your managed devices.

For more information on logging see the Logging and Reporting for FortiOS v5.0 Handbook available from the Fortinet Document Library.

The Log View tab shows log messages for connected devices, organized by ADOMs. You can also view, import, and export log files that are stored for a given device, and browse logs for all devices.