I have a fair few servers running either CentOS 4/5. I need to periodically collect critical files and transfer them to a central server, over ssh for auditing reasons.

In particular I'm thinking of files such as:

/var/log/messages
/var/log/yum.log
/etc/sudeors
/etc/sysconfig/iptables

Also, I would store and forward the result of certain commands:

chkconfig --list
cat /etc/redhat-release
pstree
nestat -anp
lshw

I've been looking for a solution on the web; but, cannot find any project that matches me need. I've heard and looked at logwatch, but, cannot find any documentation other than the official sites rather poor manual. What I've read of logwatch has led me to believe it won't be able to achieve my goal. Is there a product, preferably open-source that does this already?

The first half of your post is easy - use rsync with cron. There are tons of tutorials and documentation on rsync.

With regards to the second part, are you looking to keep the output from the above commands when you issue them or are you looking to monitor others over what they are doing with the systems?

The output will be written to file.

I've used rsync before so I'm ok with that one; however, instead of me writing my own script which would be quite easy, I was looking for a configurable tool that already exists. If there isn’t one, I'll just write a script myself; but, I'd rather use proven product.