IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.

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Auditbeat quick start: installation and configuration

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Auditbeat quick start: installation and configuration

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This guide describes how to get started quickly with audit data collection. You’ll learn how to:

install Auditbeat on each system you want to monitor
specify the location of your audit data
parse log data into fields and send it to Elasticsearch
visualize the log data in Kibana

Before you begin

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You need Elasticsearch for storing and searching your data, and Kibana for visualizing and managing it.

To get started quickly, spin up a deployment of our hosted Elasticsearch Service. The Elasticsearch Service is available on AWS, GCP, and Azure. Try it out for free.

Step 1: Install Auditbeat

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Install Auditbeat on all the servers you want to monitor.

To download and install Auditbeat, use the commands that work with your system:

curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/auditbeat/auditbeat-8.12.2-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i auditbeat-8.12.2-amd64.deb

curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/auditbeat/auditbeat-8.12.2-x86_64.rpm
sudo rpm -vi auditbeat-8.12.2-x86_64.rpm

curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/auditbeat/auditbeat-8.12.2-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz
tar xzvf auditbeat-8.12.2-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz

curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/auditbeat/auditbeat-8.12.2-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
tar xzvf auditbeat-8.12.2-linux-x86_64.tar.gz

Download the Auditbeat Windows zip file: https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/auditbeat/auditbeat-8.12.2-windows-x86_64.zip
Extract the contents of the zip file into C:\Program Files.
Rename the auditbeat-8.12.2-windows-x86_64 directory to Auditbeat.
Open a PowerShell prompt as an Administrator (right-click the PowerShell icon and select Run As Administrator).

From the PowerShell prompt, run the following commands to install Auditbeat as a Windows service:

PS > cd 'C:\Program Files\Auditbeat'
PS C:\Program Files\Auditbeat> .\install-service-auditbeat.ps1

If script execution is disabled on your system, you need to set the execution policy for the current session to allow the script to run. For example: PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy UnRestricted -File .\install-service-auditbeat.ps1.

The commands shown are for AMD platforms, but ARM packages are also available. Refer to the download page for the full list of available packages.

Other installation options

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Step 2: Connect to the Elastic Stack

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Connections to Elasticsearch and Kibana are required to set up Auditbeat.

Set the connection information in auditbeat.yml. To locate this configuration file, see Directory layout.

Specify the cloud.id of your Elasticsearch Service, and set cloud.auth to a user who is authorized to set up Auditbeat. For example:

cloud.id: "staging:dXMtZWFzdC0xLmF3cy5mb3VuZC5pbyRjZWM2ZjI2MWE3NGJmMjRjZTMzYmI4ODExYjg0Mjk0ZiRjNmMyY2E2ZDA0MjI0OWFmMGNjN2Q3YTllOTYyNTc0Mw=="
cloud.auth: "auditbeat_setup:YOUR_PASSWORD"

This examples shows a hard-coded password, but you should store sensitive values in the secrets keystore.

Set the host and port where Auditbeat can find the Elasticsearch installation, and set the username and password of a user who is authorized to set up Auditbeat. For example:

output.elasticsearch:
  hosts: ["https://myEShost:9200"]
  username: "auditbeat_internal"
  password: "YOUR_PASSWORD" 
  ssl:
    enabled: true
    ca_trusted_fingerprint: "b9a10bbe64ee9826abeda6546fc988c8bf798b41957c33d05db736716513dc9c"

This example shows a hard-coded password, but you should store sensitive values in the secrets keystore.

This example shows a hard-coded fingerprint, but you should store sensitive values in the secrets keystore. The fingerprint is a HEX encoded SHA-256 of a CA certificate, when you start Elasticsearch for the first time, security features such as network encryption (TLS) for Elasticsearch are enabled by default. If you are using the self-signed certificate generated by Elasticsearch when it is started for the first time, you will need to add its fingerprint here. The fingerprint is printed on Elasticsearch start up logs, or you can refer to connect clients to Elasticsearch documentation for other options on retrieving it. If you are providing your own SSL certificate to Elasticsearch refer to Auditbeat documentation on how to setup SSL.

If you plan to use our pre-built Kibana dashboards, configure the Kibana endpoint. Skip this step if Kibana is running on the same host as Elasticsearch.

  setup.kibana:
    host: "mykibanahost:5601" 
    username: "my_kibana_user"  
    password: "{pwd}"

	The hostname and port of the machine where Kibana is running, for example, `mykibanahost:5601`. If you specify a path after the port number, include the scheme and port: `http://mykibanahost:5601/path`.
	The `username` and `password` settings for Kibana are optional. If you don’t specify credentials for Kibana, Auditbeat uses the `username` and `password` specified for the Elasticsearch output.
	To use the pre-built Kibana dashboards, this user must be authorized to view dashboards or have the `kibana_admin` built-in role.

To learn more about required roles and privileges, see Grant users access to secured resources.

You can send data to other outputs, such as Logstash, but that requires additional configuration and setup.

Step 3: Configure data collection modules

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Auditbeat uses modules to collect audit information.

By default, Auditbeat uses a configuration that’s tailored to the operating system where Auditbeat is running.

To use a different configuration, change the module settings in auditbeat.yml.

The following example shows the file_integrity module configured to generate events whenever a file in one of the specified paths changes on disk:

auditbeat.modules:

- module: file_integrity
  paths:
  - /bin
  - /usr/bin
  - /sbin
  - /usr/sbin
  - /etc

To test your configuration file, change to the directory where the Auditbeat binary is installed, and run Auditbeat in the foreground with the following options specified: ./auditbeat test config -e. Make sure your config files are in the path expected by Auditbeat (see Directory layout), or use the -c flag to specify the path to the config file.

For more information about configuring Auditbeat, also see:

Configure Auditbeat
Config file format
auditbeat.reference.yml: This reference configuration file shows all non-deprecated options. You’ll find it in the same location as auditbeat.yml.

Step 4: Set up assets

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Auditbeat comes with predefined assets for parsing, indexing, and visualizing your data. To load these assets:

Make sure the user specified in auditbeat.yml is authorized to set up Auditbeat.
From the installation directory, run:
```
auditbeat setup -e
```
```
auditbeat setup -e
```
```
./auditbeat setup -e
```
```
./auditbeat setup -e
```
```
PS > .\auditbeat.exe setup -e
```
-e is optional and sends output to standard error instead of the configured log output.

This step loads the recommended index template for writing to Elasticsearch and deploys the sample dashboards for visualizing the data in Kibana.

A connection to Elasticsearch (or Elasticsearch Service) is required to set up the initial environment. If you’re using a different output, such as Logstash, see Load the index template manually and Load Kibana dashboards.

Step 5: Start Auditbeat

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Before starting Auditbeat, modify the user credentials in auditbeat.yml and specify a user who is authorized to publish events.

To start Auditbeat, run:

sudo service auditbeat start

If you use an init.d script to start Auditbeat, you can’t specify command line flags (see Command reference). To specify flags, start Auditbeat in the foreground.

Also see Auditbeat and systemd.

sudo service auditbeat start

If you use an init.d script to start Auditbeat, you can’t specify command line flags (see Command reference). To specify flags, start Auditbeat in the foreground.

Also see Auditbeat and systemd.

sudo chown root auditbeat.yml 
sudo ./auditbeat -e

You’ll be running Auditbeat as root, so you need to change ownership of the configuration file, or run Auditbeat with --strict.perms=false specified. See Config File Ownership and Permissions.

sudo chown root auditbeat.yml 
sudo ./auditbeat -e

You’ll be running Auditbeat as root, so you need to change ownership of the configuration file, or run Auditbeat with --strict.perms=false specified. See Config File Ownership and Permissions.

PS C:\Program Files\auditbeat> Start-Service auditbeat

By default, Windows log files are stored in C:\ProgramData\auditbeat\Logs.

Auditbeat should begin streaming events to Elasticsearch.

If you see a warning about too many open files, you need to increase the ulimit. See the FAQ for more details.

Step 6: View your data in Kibana

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To make it easier for you to start auditing the activities of users and processes on your system, Auditbeat comes with pre-built Kibana dashboards and UIs for visualizing your data.

To open the dashboards:

Launch Kibana:
1. Log in to your Elastic Cloud account.
2. Navigate to the Kibana endpoint in your deployment.
Point your browser to http://localhost:5601, replacing localhost with the name of the Kibana host.
In the side navigation, click Discover. To see Auditbeat data, make sure the predefined auditbeat-* index pattern is selected.

If you don’t see data in Kibana, try changing the time filter to a larger range. By default, Kibana shows the last 15 minutes.
In the side navigation, click Dashboard, then select the dashboard that you want to open.

The dashboards are provided as examples. We recommend that you customize them to meet your needs.

What’s next?

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Now that you have audit data streaming into Elasticsearch, learn how to unify your logs, metrics, uptime, and application performance data.

Ingest data from other sources by installing and configuring other Elastic Beats:

Elastic Beats To capture

Metricbeat

Infrastructure metrics

Filebeat

Logs

Winlogbeat

Windows event logs

Heartbeat

Uptime information

APM

Application performance metrics

Elastic Beats	To capture
Metricbeat	Infrastructure metrics
Filebeat	Logs
Winlogbeat	Windows event logs
Heartbeat	Uptime information
APM	Application performance metrics

Use the Observability apps in Kibana to search across all your data:

Elastic apps	Use to
Metrics app	Explore metrics about systems and services across your ecosystem
Logs app	Tail related log data in real time
Uptime app	Monitor availability issues across your apps and services
APM app	Monitor application performance
SIEM app	Analyze security events

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