Final answer:
Effective logging enables system administrators to quickly identify and address issues after a system breach or failure. Logging tracks a wide range of information essential for troubleshooting and security incident detection. It is distinct from archiving, security measures, and patching but plays a crucial role in system recovery and remediation.
Step-by-step explanation:
Effective logging helps ensure that in the event of a system breach or failure, system administrators can more quickly and accurately identify what happened and thus most effectively focus their remediation and recovery efforts. Logging is the process of recording events and transactions that occur within a system, capturing a wide range of information such as user activities, system errors, and other significant events. This information is critical for troubleshooting issues, detecting security incidents, and performing root cause analysis after an event.
Proper logging strategies should include the collection of relevant data, secure storage of log files to prevent tampering, and the implementation of management tools for analyzing logs efficiently. In contrast, archiving is the process of moving data that is no longer actively used to a separate storage device for long-term retention, security encompasses the overall measures and protections in place to safeguard systems, and patching refers to the updating of software to fix vulnerabilities or improve performance.