Secure Your Graylog Environment

When planning your Graylog deployment, prioritizing security is essential to protect sensitive log data and maintain system integrity. There are several mechanisms to secure Graylog's components and ensure data integrity, addressing vulnerabilities across the logging pipeline from ingestion to storage and retrieval.

This article highlights key security practices recommended for a secure Graylog deployment. Incorporating these practices into your deployment helps to ensure compliance with security standards and mitigate risks associated with unauthorized access, data breaches, or malicious activities.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure that the following prerequisites are met:

Familiarity with Graylog architecture, including core components of the stack (Graylog Server, Data Nodes, and MongoDB), is necessary to apply security best practices to your Graylog deployment.
Basic knowledge of firewall configuration and access control mechanisms, TLS/SSL encryption for securing data in transit, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and user permission management, and authentication protocols is highly recommended.
Additionally, knowledge of X.509 certificates, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and your internal DNS infrastructure and the ability to generate certificates from a Certificate Authority (CA) are crucial.

Highlights

The following highlights provide a summary of the key takeaways from this article:

Restrict access by ensuring only necessary ports (e.g. web interface, API, and inputs) are open and configure firewalls to limit access to trusted IP ranges.
Implement TLS/SSL encryption for all data in transit between Graylog components, clients, and log sources.
Enable role-based access control (RBAC) to ensure users have only the necessary permissions.
Configure authentication methods such as LDAP/Active Directory, SAML, or OpenID Connect (OIDC) to enforce secure logins.

Transit Encryption

Transit encryption refers to the process of encrypting data as it moves between different components within a system or between systems. For Graylog, this means securing communications between the Graylog Server, Data Node, MongoDB, clients, web interface, and log sources (such as Syslog, GELF, and Beats) using Transport Layer Security (TLS).

Encrypting data in transit is a best practice for preventing unauthorized interception or tampering of sensitive log information as it flows between systems. This is a crucial security measure in modern IT environments where logs may contain sensitive, operational, security, or compliance-related data.

TLS Encryption and Graylog Data Node

TLS encryption can be applied by the Graylog Data Node for secure communication with OpenSearch during the preflight interface when starting the Graylog service for the first time. Review Manage Certificates with Data Node to learn how you can generate certificates for secure communication between all Graylog nodes and all Data Nodes.

TLS Encryption and the Graylog Web Interface

Secure Graylog Interface with TLS reviews how TLS encryption can be applied to secure the Graylog web interface by enabling HTTPS, ensuring that all communication between users, the web UI, and the API is encrypted and protecting sensitive data such as log searches, user credentials, and administrative actions from interception or tampering.

TLS Encryption and Inputs

Secure Inputs with TLS explains how to secure Graylog inputs with TLS encryption to protect log data transmitted over networks, particularly when handling sensitive information. It provides a step-by-step guide on enabling TLS for inputs, including generating a TLS certificate and private key, uploading them to the Graylog server, and configuring an input to use TLS. The article walks users through navigating the Graylog web interface, modifying input settings, and ensuring that TLS encryption is correctly applied for secure log ingestion.

Data Encryption

Data encryption at rest refers to the protection of stored data by converting it into an encrypted format that can only be accessed or decrypted with the proper cryptographic key. This can mean securing log data, metadata, and configurations stored in the Graylog Data Node and MongoDB from unauthorized access or breaches.

Encrypting data at rest helps protect logs even if an attacker gains access to the underlying storage by making the raw data unreadable without decryption keys.

To protect stored log data from unauthorized access, use encryption mechanisms at the operating system and storage level.

Warning: Graylog does not have built-in encryption for data that is stored (at rest) on disk. If you want to ensure that log data is encrypted when stored, you will need to configure disk-level or file-level encryption.

Data Encryption Example

Configuration files often contain API keys, database credentials, and TLS certificates. Encrypting them prevents credential leaks. This is an example of encrypting Graylog configuration files.

You can use OpenSSL to encrypt sensitive configuration files, like in this example:

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openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -salt -in server.conf -out server.conf.enc -k "supersecurepassword"

To decrypt these files:

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openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -d -in server.conf.enc -out server.conf -k "supersecurepassword"

Authentication

Authentication is the process of verifying users before granting access to the system. It ensures that only authorized individuals can view or manage logs. Graylog supports multiple authentication methods to secure access.

Internal Authentication

By default, Graylog's internal method of authentication relies on strong password enforcement. See Install Graylog for information on how the root and password secret are defined and applied by the Graylog administrator.

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Graylog’s ability to integrate with your organizational identity provider (IdP) allows you to use single sign-on (SSO) to authenticate users with the Graylog web interface. Graylog Open supports Active Directory and LDAP integration. Graylog Enterprise adds support for Okta as well as generic OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication so you can manage your Graylog login with a variety of OIDC-compliant identity providers. For more information, see User Authentication.

Authorization (Access Control)

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) in Graylog ensures that users have the appropriate level of access based on their roles and responsibilities. This approach enhances security, operational efficiency, and compliance by limiting permissions to only what is necessary for each user. For more information on user-based roles and permissions, see Permission Management.

Audit Logs

This is a Graylog Enterprise feature. A valid Graylog Enterprise license is required.

Audit logging in Graylog provides a detailed record of system activity, tracking user actions, configuration changes, and security-related events. This feature is essential for security monitoring, compliance auditing, and troubleshooting, ensuring visibility into who accessed or modified system settings. See Audit Log for more information.

Graylog Updates

Graylog major releases, periodic bug fixes, and security updates are published frequently to address issues and introduce new features. To maintain system security and stability, it is recommended to regularly update your Graylog instance and its components, ensuring that vulnerabilities are patched and performance improvements are applied. Review the Changelog for the most recent release information.