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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [7.3] ›Alerting on cluster and index events

Encrypting sensitive data in Watcher

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Encrypting sensitive data in Watcher

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Watches might have access to sensitive data such as HTTP basic authentication information or details about your SMTP email service. You can encrypt this data by generating a key and adding some secure settings on each node in your cluster.

Every password field that is used in your watch within an HTTP basic authentication block - for example within a webhook, an HTTP input or when using the reporting email attachment - will not be stored as plain text anymore. Also be aware, that there is no way to configure your own fields in a watch to be encrypted.

To encrypt sensitive data in Watcher:

  1. Use the elasticsearch-syskeygen command to create a system key file.

  2. Copy the system_key file to all of the nodes in your cluster.

    The system key is a symmetric key, so the same key must be used on every node in the cluster.

  3. Set the xpack.watcher.encrypt_sensitive_data setting:

    xpack.watcher.encrypt_sensitive_data: true

  4. Set the xpack.watcher.encryption_key setting in the Elasticsearch keystore on each node in the cluster.

    For example, run the following command to import the system_key file on each node:

    bin/elasticsearch-keystore add-file xpack.watcher.encryption_key <filepath>/system_key
  5. Delete the system_key file on each node in the cluster.

Existing watches are not affected by these changes. Only watches that you create after following these steps have encryption enabled.

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