This functionality is in beta and is subject to change. The design and code is considered to be less mature than official GA features. Elastic will take a best effort approach to fix any issues, but beta features are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.
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Elastic Docs ›Heartbeat Reference [6.4] ›Securing Heartbeat

Configure Heartbeat to use X-Pack security

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Configure Heartbeat to use X-Pack security

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If you want Heartbeat to connect to a cluster that has X-Pack security enabled, there are extra configuration steps:

  1. Configure authentication credentials.

    To send data to a secured cluster through the elasticsearch output, Heartbeat needs to authenticate as a user who can manage index templates, monitor the cluster, create indices, and read and write to the indices it creates.

  2. Grant users access to Heartbeat indices.

    To search the indexed Heartbeat data and visualize it in Kibana, users need access to the indices Heartbeat creates.

  3. Configure Heartbeat to use encrypted connections.

    If encryption is enabled on the cluster, you need to enable HTTPS in the Heartbeat configuration.

  4. Set the password for the beats_system built-in user.

    Heartbeat uses the beats_system user to send monitoring data to Elasticsearch. If you plan to monitor Heartbeat in Kibana and have not yet set up the password, set it up now.

For more information about X-Pack security, see Securing the Elastic Stack.

Heartbeat features that require authorization

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After securing Heartbeat, make sure your users have the roles (or associated privileges) required to use these Heartbeat features. You must create the heartbeat_writer and heartbeat_reader roles (see Configure authentication credentials and Grant users access to Heartbeat indices). The machine_learning_admin and kibana_user roles are built-in.

Feature Role

Send data to a secured cluster

heartbeat_writer

Load index templates

heartbeat_writer and kibana_user

Load Heartbeat dashboards into Kibana

heartbeat_writer and kibana_user

Load machine learning jobs

machine_learning_admin

Read indices created by Heartbeat

heartbeat_reader

View Heartbeat dashboards in Kibana

kibana_user
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