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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Reference [6.2] ›Set up X-Pack ›Configuring Security in Elasticsearch

Auditing Security Settings

Auditing Security Settings

All of these settings can be added to the elasticsearch.yml configuration file. For more information, see Auditing Security Events.

General Auditing Settings

xpack.security.audit.enabled
Set to true to enable auditing on the node. The default value is false.
xpack.security.audit.outputs

Specifies where audit logs are output. For example: [ index, logfile ]. The default value is logfile, which puts the auditing events in a dedicated <clustername>_access.log file on the node. You can also specify index, which puts the auditing events in an Elasticsearch index that is prefixed with .security_audit_log. The index can reside on the same cluster or a separate cluster.

If the index is unavailable, it is possible for auditing events to be lost. The index output type should therefore be used in conjunction with the logfile output type and the latter should be the official record of events.

Audited Event Settings

The events and some other information about what gets logged can be controlled by using the following settings:

xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.include
Specifies which events to include in the auditing output. The default value is: access_denied, access_granted, anonymous_access_denied, authentication_failed, connection_denied, tampered_request, run_as_denied, run_as_granted.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.exclude
Excludes the specified events from the output. By default, no events are excluded.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.emit_request_body

Specifies whether to include the request body from REST requests on certain event types such as authentication_failed. The default value is false.

No filtering is performed when auditing, so sensitive data may be audited in plain text when including the request body in audit events.

Local Node Info Settings

xpack.security.audit.logfile.prefix.emit_node_name
Specifies whether to include the node’s name in the local node info. The default value is true.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.prefix.emit_node_host_address
Specifies whether to include the node’s IP address in the local node info. The default value is false.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.prefix.emit_node_host_name
Specifies whether to include the node’s host name in the local node info. The default value is false.

Audit Log Indexing Configuration Settings

xpack.security.audit.index.bulk_size
Controls how many audit events are batched into a single write. The default value is 1000.
xpack.security.audit.index.flush_interval
Controls how often buffered events are flushed to the index. The default value is 1s.
xpack.security.audit.index.rollover
Controls how often to roll over to a new index: hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. The default value is daily.
xpack.security.audit.index.events.include
Specifies the audit events to be indexed. The default value is anonymous_access_denied, authentication_failed, realm_authentication_failed, access_granted, access_denied, tampered_request, connection_granted, connection_denied, run_as_granted, run_as_denied. See Audit Entry Types for the complete list.
xpack.security.audit.index.events.exclude
Excludes the specified auditing events from indexing. By default, no events are excluded.
xpack.security.audit.index.events.emit_request_body
Specifies whether to include the request body from REST requests on certain event types such as authentication_failed. The default value is false.
xpack.security.audit.index.settings

Specifies settings for the indices that the events are stored in. For example, the following configuration sets the number of shards and replicas to 1 for the audit indices: 

xpack.security.audit.index.settings:
  index:
    number_of_shards: 1
    number_of_replicas: 1

These settings apply to the local audit indices, as well as to the remote audit indices, but only if the remote cluster does not have X-Pack security installed, or the Elasticsearch versions are different. If the remote cluster has X-Pack security installed, and the versions coincide, the settings for the audit indices there will take precedence, even if they are unspecified (i.e. left to defaults).

Remote Audit Log Indexing Configuration Settings

To index audit events to a remote Elasticsearch cluster, you configure the following xpack.security.audit.index.client settings:

xpack.security.audit.index.client.hosts
Specifies a comma-separated list of host:port pairs. These hosts should be nodes in the remote cluster. If you are using default values for the transport.tcp.port setting, you can omit the port value. Otherwise, it must match the transport.tcp.port setting.
xpack.security.audit.index.client.cluster.name
Specifies the name of the remote cluster.
xpack.security.audit.index.client.xpack.security.user
Specifies the username:password pair that is used to authenticate with the remote cluster.

You can pass additional settings to the remote client by specifying them in the xpack.security.audit.index.client namespace. For example, to allow the remote client to discover all of the nodes in the remote cluster you can specify the client.transport.sniff setting:

xpack.security.audit.index.client.transport.sniff: true
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