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Host isolation

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Host isolation

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Host isolation allows you to isolate hosts from your network, blocking communication with other hosts on your network until you release the host. Isolating a host is useful for responding to malicious activity or preventing potential attacks, as it prevents lateral movement across other hosts.

Isolated hosts, however, can still send data to Elasticsearch and Kibana. You can also create host isolation exceptions for specific IP addresses that isolated hosts are still allowed to communicate with, even when blocked from the rest of your network.

Host isolation is a Platinum or Enterprise subscription feature.

For Elastic Stack version >= 7.15.0, host isolation is supported for endpoints running Windows, macOS, and these Linux distributions:

  • CentOS/RHEL 8
  • Ubuntu 18.04
  • Ubuntu 20.04
  • AWS Linux 2

To isolate and release hosts in any operating system, you must have the built-in superuser role. For more information, refer to Built-in users.

Shows a host that’s been isolated

You can isolate a host from an alert attached to a case or from the Endpoints list. Once a host is successfully isolated, an Isolated status displays next to the Agent status field, which you can view on the alert details flyout or Endpoints list table.

If the request fails, verify that the agent and your endpoint are both online before trying again.

All actions executed on a host are tracked in the host’s activity log, which you can access from the Endpoints page. See View host isolation details for more information.

Isolate a host

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To isolate a host from a case alert:

  1. Go to Investigate → Cases, then select the appropriate case to view the case activity. Ensure you are viewing a case with at least one alert attached to it.
  2. Find the appropriate alert, then click the Show alert details button (>). The alert details flyout opens.
  3. Click Take action → Isolate host.
  4. Enter a comment describing why you’re isolating the host (optional).
  5. Click Confirm.

To isolate a host from an endpoint:

  1. Go to Manage → Endpoints, then either:

    • Select the appropriate endpoint in the Endpoint column, and click Take action → Isolate host in the endpoint details flyout.
    • Click the Actions menu (…​) on the appropriate endpoint, then select Isolate host.
  2. Enter a comment describing why you’re isolating the host (optional).
  3. Click Confirm.

After the host is successfully isolated, an Isolated status is added to the endpoint. Active end users receive a notification that the computer has been isolated from the network:

Host isolated notification message

Release a host

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To release a host from a case alert:

  1. Go to Investigate → Cases, then click on the appropriate case to view the case activity its details.
  2. Find the appropriate alert, then click the Show alert details button (>). The alert details flyout opens.
  3. From the alert details flyout, click Take action → Release host.
  4. Enter a comment describing why you’re releasing the host (optional).
  5. Click Confirm.

To release a host from an endpoint:

  1. Go to Manage → Endpoints, then either:

    • Select the appropriate endpoint in the Endpoint column, and click Take action → Release host in the endpoint details flyout.
    • Click the Actions menu (…​) on the appropriate endpoint, then select Release host.
  2. Enter a comment describing why you’re releasing the host (optional).
  3. Click Confirm.

After the host is successfully released, the Isolated status is removed from the endpoint. Active end users receive a notification that the computer has been reconnected to the network:

Host released notification message

View host isolation details

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The host activity log tracks all actions performed on the host, including comments added, who made the host isolation request and when, and when the host received the request to isolate.

To view the host’s isolation details:

  1. Go to Manage → Endpoints, then click the host’s name in the Endpoint column. The endpoint details flyout opens.
  2. Click Activity Log to view the endpoint’s activity history.
  3. Use the date and time picker to view endpoint activity within a specific date and time period.
Shows the activity log of an isolated host
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