Cisco Security Analytics and Logging

About Security Analytics and Logging (SaaS) in CDO

Cisco Security Analytics and Logging (SAL) allows you to capture connection, intrusion, file, malware, security intelligence, syslog, and Netflow Secure Event Logging (NSEL) events from all of your ASA and Secure Firewall Threat Defense devices and view them in one place in CDO. The events are stored in the Cisco cloud and viewable from the Event Logging page in CDO, where you can filter and review them to gain a clear understanding of what security rules are triggering in your network.

With additional licensing, after you capture these events, you can cross-launch from CDO to a Secure Cloud Analytics portal provisioned for you. Secure Cloud Analytics is a software as a service (SaaS) solution that tracks the state of your network by performing a behavioral analysis on events and network flow data. By gathering information about your network traffic from sources including firewall events and network flow data, it creates observations about the traffic and automatically identifies roles for network entities based on their traffic patterns. Using this information combined with other sources of threat intelligence, such as Talos, Secure Cloud Analytics generates alerts, which constitute a warning that there is behavior that may be malicious in nature. Along with the alerts, Secure Cloud Analytics provides network and host visibility, and contextual information it has gathered to provide you with a better basis to research the alert and locate sources of malicious behavior.

Terminology Note: In this documentation, when Cisco Security Analytics and Logging is used with the Secure Cloud Analytics portal (a software as a service product) you will see this integration referred to as Cisco Security Analytics and Logging (SaaS) or SAL (SaaS).

Event Types in CDO

When filtering ASA and Secure Firewall Threat Defense events logged by Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS), you can choose from a list of ASA and FTD event types that CDO supports. From the CDO menu, navigate Analytics > Event Logging and click the filter icon to choose events. These event types represent groups of syslog IDs. The table that follows shows which syslog IDs are included in which event type. If you want to learn more about a specific syslog ID, you can search for it in the Cisco ASA Series Syslog Messages or the Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Syslog Messages guides.

Some syslog events have the additional attribute "EventName." You can filter the events table to find events using the EventName attribute by filtering by attribute:value pairs. See Event Name Attributes for Syslog Events.

Some syslog events will have the additional attributes "EventGroup" and "EventGroupDefinition". You will be able to filter the events table to find events using these additional attributes by filtering by attribute:value pairs. See EventGroup and EventGroupDefinition Attributes for Some Syslog Messages.

The NetFlow events are different from syslog events. The NetFlow filter searches for all NetFlow event IDs that resulted in an NSEL record. Those NetFlow event IDs are defined in the Cisco ASA NetFlow Implementation Guide.

The following table describes the event types that CDO supports and lists the syslog or NetFlow event numbers that correspond to the event types:

Filter Name

Description

Corresponding Syslog Event or Netflow Event

AAA

These are events that the system generates when failed or invalid attempts happen to authenticate, authorize, or use up resources in the network, when AAA is configured.

109001-109035

113001-113027

BotNet

These events get logged when a user attempts to access a malicious network, which might contain a malware-infected host, possibly a BotNet, or when the system detects traffic to or from a domain or an IP address in the dynamic filter block list.

338001-338310

Failover

These events get logged when the system detects errors in stateful and stateless failover configurations or errors in the secondary firewall unit when a failover occurs.

101001-101005, 102001, 103001-103007, 104001-104004, 105001-105048

210001-210022

311001-311004

709001-709007

Firewall Denied

These events get generated when the firewall system denies traffic of a network packet for various reasons, ranging from a packet drop because of the security policy to a drop because the system received a packet with the same source IP and destination IP, which could potentially mean an attack on the network.

Firewall Denied events may be contained in a NetFlow and may be reported with NetFlow event IDs as well as syslog IDs.

106001, 106007, 106012, 106013, 106015, 106016, 106017, 106020, 106021, 106022, 106023, 106025, 106027

Firewall Traffic

These are events that get logged depending on the various connection attempts in the network, user identities, time stamps, terminated sessions, and so on.

Firewall Traffic events may be contained in a NetFlow and may be reported with NetFlow event IDs as well as syslog IDs.

106001-106100, 108001-108007, 110002-110003

201002-201013, 209003-209005, 215001

302002-302304, 302022-302027, 303002-303005, 313001-313008, 317001-317006, 324000-324301, 337001-337009

400001-400050, 401001-401005, 406001-406003, 407001-407003, 408001-408003, 415001-415020, 416001, 418001-418002, 419001-419003, 424001-424002, 431001-431002, 450001

500001-500005, 508001-508002

607001-607003, 608001-608005, 609001-609002, 616001

703001-703003, 726001

IPsec VPN

These events are logged in an IPsec VPN-configured firewall when mismatches occur in IPsec security associations or when the system detects an error in the IPsec packets it receives.

402001-402148, 602102-602305, 702304-702307

NAT

These events are logged in a NAT-configured firewall when NAT entries are created or deleted and when all the addresses in a NAT pool are used up and exhausted.

201002-201013, 202001-202011, 305005-305012

SSL VPN

These events are logged in an SSL VPN-configurated firewall when WebVPN sessions get created or terminated, user access errors, and user activities.

716001-716060, 722001-722053, 723001-723014, 724001-724004, 725001-725015

NetFlow

These events are logged around the IP network traffic as network packets enter and exit the interfaces, timestamps, user identities, and the amount of data transferred.

0, 1, 2, 3, 5

Connection

You can generate events for connections as users generate traffic that passes through the system. Enable connection logging on access rules to generate these events. You can also enable logging on Security Intelligence policies and SSL decryption rules to generate connection events.

Connection events contain data about the detected sessions. The information available for any individual connection event depends on several factors, but in general includes:

  • Basic connection properties: timestamp, source and destination IP address, ingress and egress zones, the device that handled the connection, and so on.

  • Additional connection properties discovered or inferred by the system: applications, requested URLs, or users associated with the connection, and so on.

  • Metadata about why the connection was logged: which configuration handled the traffic, whether the connection was allowed or blocked, details about encrypted and decrypted connections, and so on.

430002, 430003

Intrusion

The system examines the packets that traverse your network for malicious activity that could affect the availability, integrity, and confidentiality of a host and its data. When the system identifies a possible intrusion, it generates an intrusion event, which is a record of the date, time, type of exploit, and contextual information about the source of the attack and its target. Intrusion events are generated for any intrusion rule set to block or alert, regardless of the logging configuration of the invoking access control rule.

430001

File

File events represent files that the system detected, and optionally blocked, in network traffic based on your file policies. You must enable file logging on the access rule that applies the file policy to generate these events.

When the system generates a file event, the system also logs the end of the associated connection regardless of the logging configuration of the invoking access control rule.

430004

Malware

The system can detect malware in network traffic as part of your overall access control configuration. AMP for Firepower can generate a malware event, containing the disposition of the resulting event, and contextual data about how, where, and when the malware was detected. You must enable file logging on the access rule that applies the file policy to generate these events.

The disposition of a file can change, for example, from clean to malware or from malware to clean. If AMP for Firepower queries the AMP cloud about a file, and the cloud determines the disposition has changed within a week of the query, the system generates retrospective malware events.

430005

Security Intelligence

Security Intelligence events are a type of connection event generated by the Security Intelligence policy for each connection that is blocked or monitored by the policy. All Security Intelligence events have a populated Security Intelligence Category field.

For each of these events, there is a corresponding "regular" connection event. Because the Security Intelligence policy is evaluated before many other security policies, including access control, when a connection is blocked by Security Intelligence, the resulting event does not contain the information that the system would have gathered from subsequent evaluation, for example, user identity.

430002, 430003

About Security Analytics and Logging (SAL SaaS) for the ASA

Security Analytics and Logging (SaaS) allows you to capture all syslog events and Netflow Secure Event Logging (NSEL) from your ASA and view them in one place in CDO.

The events are stored in the Cisco cloud and viewable from the Event Logging page in CDO where you can filter and review them to gain a clear understanding of what security rules are triggering in your network. The Logging and Troubleshooting package gives you these capabilities.

With the Logging Analytics and Detection package (formerly Firewall Analytics and Logging package), the system can apply Secure Cloud Analytics dynamic entity modeling to your FTD events, and use behavioral modeling analytics to generate Secure Cloud Analytics observations and alerts. If you obtain a Total Network Analytics and Monitoring package, the system applies dynamic entity modeling to both your FTD events and your network traffic, and generates observations and alerts. You can cross-launch from CDO to a Secure Cloud Analytics portal provisioned for you, using Cisco Single Sign-On.

How ASA Events are Displayed in the CDO Events Viewer

Syslog events and NSEL events are generated when logging is enabled on the ASA, and network traffic matches access control rule criteria. After the events are stored in the Cisco cloud, you can view them in CDO.

You can install multiple Secure Event Connectors (SECs) and send events generated by a rule, on any device, to any of the SECs as if it were a syslog server. The SEC then forwards the event to the Cisco cloud. Do not forward the same events to all of your SECs. You will be duplicating the events sent to the Cisco cloud and needlessly inflate your daily ingest rate.

How Syslog and NSEL Events are Sent from an ASA to the Cisco Cloud by way of the Secure Event Connector

With the basic Logging and Troubleshooting license, this is how an ASA event reaches the Cisco cloud:

  1. You onboard your ASA to CDO using username and password.

  2. You configure the ASA to forward syslog and NSEL events to any one of your SECs as if they were syslog servers and enable logging on the device.

  3. The SEC forwards the events to the Cisco cloud where the events are stored.

  4. CDO displays events from the Cisco cloud in its Events Viewer based on the filters you set.

With the Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license, the following also occur:

  1. Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics applies analytics to the ASA syslog events stored in the Cisco cloud.

  2. Generated observations and alerts are accessible from the Secure Cloud Analytics portal associated with your CDO portal.

  3. From the CDO portal, you can cross-launch your Secure Cloud Analytics portal to review these observations and alerts.

Componets Used in the Solution

Secure Device Connector (SDC)-The SDC connects CDO to your ASAs. The login credentials for the ASA are stored on the SDC. See Secure Device Connector for more information.

Secure Event Connector (SEC)-The SEC is an application that receives events from your ASAs and forwards them to the Cisco cloud. Once in the Cisco cloud, you can view the events on CDO's Event Logging page or analyze them with Secure Cloud Analytics. Depending on your environment, the SEC is installed on a Secure Device Connector, if you have one; or on its own CDO Connector virtual machine that you maintain in your network. See Secure Event Connectors for more information.

Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA)-The ASA provides advanced stateful firewall and VPN concentrator functionality as well as integrated services with add-on modules. The ASA includes many advanced features, such as multiple security contexts (similar to virtualized firewalls), clustering (combining multiple firewalls into a single firewall), transparent (Layer 2) firewall or routed (Layer 3) firewall operation, advanced inspection engines, IPsec VPN, SSL VPN, and clientless SSL VPN support, and many more features.

Secure Cloud Analytics applies dynamic entity modeling to ASA events, generating detections based on this information. This provides a deeper analysis of telemetry gathered from your network, allowing you to identify trends and examine anomalous behavior in your network traffic. You would make use of this service if you have a Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license.

Licensing

To configure this solution you need the following accounts and licenses:

  • CDO. You must have a CDO tenant.

  • Secure Device Connector. There is no separate license for a Secure Device Connector.

  • Secure Event Connector. There is no separate license for a Secure Event Connector.

  • Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS). See the Security Analytics and Logging License table.

  • Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA). Base license or higher.

Security Analytics and Logging Licensing

In order to implement Security Analytics and Logging (SaaS), you need to purchase one of these licenses:

License Name

Provided Functionality

Available License Durations

Functionality Prerequisites

Logging and Troubleshooting

  • View ASA events and event detail within CDO, both as a live feed and as a historical view

  • 1 year

  • 3 years

  • 5 years

  • CDO

  • An on-premises ASA deployment running software version 9.6 or greater.

  • Deployment of one or more SECs to pass ASA events to the Cisco cloud.

Logging Analytics and Detection (formerly Firewall Analytics and Monitoring)

Logging and Troubleshooting functionality, plus:

  • Apply dynamic entity modeling and behavioral analytics to your events.

  • Open alerts in Secure Cloud Analytics based on event data, cross-launching from the CDO event viewer.

  • 1 year

  • 3 years

  • 5 years

  • CDO

  • An on-premises ASA deployment running software version 9.6 or greater

  • Deployment of one or more SECs to pass ASA events to the Cisco cloud.

  • A newly provisioned or existing Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics portal.

Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

Logging Analytics and Detection, plus:

  • Apply dynamic entity modeling and behavioral analytics to ASA events, on-premises network traffic, and cloud-based network traffic

  • Open alerts in Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics based on the combination of ASA event data, on-premises network traffic flow data collected by Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics sensors, and cloud-based network traffic passed to Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics, cross-launching from the CDO event viewer.

  • 1 year

  • 3 years

  • 5 years

  • CDO

  • An on-premises ASA deployment running software version 9.6 or greater

  • Deployment of one or more SECs to pass events to the Cisco cloud.

  • Deployment of at least one Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics sensor version 4.1 or greater to pass network traffic flow data to the cloud OR integrating Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics with a cloud-based deployment, to pass network traffic flow data to Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics.

  • A newly provisioned or existing Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics portal.

Data Plans

You need to buy a data plan that reflects the number of events the Cisco cloud receives from your on-boarded ASAs on a daily basis. This is called your "daily ingest rate." You can use the Logging Volume Estimator Tool to estimate your daily ingest rate and as that rate changes you can update your data plan.

Data plans are available in 1 GB daily volumes increments, and in 1, 3 or 5 year terms. See the Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) Ordering Guide for information about data plans.


Note

If you have a Security Analytics and Logging license and data plan, then obtain a different license at a later date, that alone does not require you to obtain a different data plan. If your network traffic throughput changes and you obtain a different data plan, that alone does not require you to obtain a different Security Analytics and Logging license.

30-day Free Trial

You can request a 30-day risk-free trial by logging in to CDO and navigating Analytics > Event Logging tab. On completion of the 30-day trial, you can order the desired event data volume to continue the service from Cisco Commerce Workspace (CCW), by following the instructions in the Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) ordering guide.

Next Step

Go to Implementing Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) for ASA Devices

Implementing Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) for ASA Devices

Before you Begin

Workflow to Implement Cisco Security Analytics and Logging (SaaS) and Send Events through the Secure Event Connector to the Cisco Cloud

  1. Be sure to review "Before you Begin" above to make sure your environment is properly configured.

  2. Onboard ASA Device to CDO using username and password.

  3. Send ASA Syslog Events to the Cisco Cloud.

  4. Configuring NSEL for ASA Devices Using a CDO Macro.

  5. Confirm events are visible in CDO. From the navigation bar, select Analytics > Event Logging. Click the Live tab to view live events.

  6. If you have a Firewall Analytics and Monitoring or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license, continue with the next section, Analyzing Events with Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics.

Analyzing Events with Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics

If you have a Firewall Analytics and Monitoring or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license, perform the following in addition to the previous steps:

  1. Provision a Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics Portal.

  2. Deploy one or more Secure Cloud Analytics sensors to your internal network if you purchased a Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license. See Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics Sensor Deployment for Total Network Analytics and Reporting.

  3. Invite users to create Secure Cloud Analytics user accounts, tied to their Cisco Single Sign-On credentials. See Viewing Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics Alerts from CDO.

  4. Cross-launch from CDO to Secure Cloud Analytics to monitor the Secure Cloud Analytics alerts generated from FTD events. See Viewing Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics Alerts from CDO.

Reviewing Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics Alerts by Cross-launching from CDO

With a Firewall Analytics and Monitoring or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license, you can cross-launch from CDO to Secure Cloud Analytics to review the alerts generated by FTD events.

Review these articles for more information:

Troubleshooting Secure Event Connector Issues

Use these troubleshooting topics to gather status and logging information about

Workflows

Troubleshooting Using Security and Analytics Logging Events describes using the events generated from Cisco Security Analytics and Logging to determine why a user can't access a network resource.

See also Working with Alerts Based on Firepower Threat Defense Events.

Send ASA Syslog Events to the Cisco Cloud using a CDO Macro

You can configure all your ASAs to send events to the Cisco cloud by creating a CDO Macro that uses all the commands described in Send ASA Syslog Events to the Cisco Cloud Using the Command Line Interface and running that macro on all your ASA in the same batch.

CDO's Macro tool allows you to assemble a list of CLI commands, turn elements of the command syntax into parameters, and then save the list of commands so that it can be used more than once. Macros can also be run on more than one device at a time.

Using proven macros promotes configuration consistencies between devices and prevents syntax errors that can occur when using the command line interface.

Before you read further, review these topics so that you understand the mechanics of using macros. This article will only describe assembling the final macro.

Creating an ASA Security Analytics and Logging (SaaS) Macro

There are two types of formatting you'll see in the following procedure, ASA CLI commands and macro formatting. The ASA CLI commands are written to follow ASA syntax conventions. The macro conventions are described in Create a CLI Macro.

Before you begin, open Send ASA Syslog Events to the Cisco Cloud in a separate window and read it in parallel with this procedure so you can read the command descriptions as you create your macros.


Note

If a logging config is already in place on the ASA, running the macro from CDO will not first clear out all of the existing logging config. Rather, the settings defined in the CDO macro will merge into whatever might already be in place.

Procedure

Step 1

Open a plain text editor and create a list of commands you are going to turn into a macro, based on the instructions and options below. CDO will execute the commands in the order they are written in the macro. Some command will have values that you turn into {{parameters}} that you will fill in when it comes time to run the macro.

Step 2

Configure the ASA to send messages to an SEC as if it were a syslog server.

Use the logging host command to specify the SEC as the syslog server you send messages to. You can send events to any one of the SECs you have onboarded to your tenant.

The logging host command specifies a TCP or UDP port to send events to. See Finding Your Device's TCP, UDP, and NSEL Port Used for Cisco Security Analytics and Logging to determine what ports you should use.

logging hostinterface_nameSEC_IP_address{ tcp/port| udp/port}

Turn this command into one of two different macros depending on what protocol you use to send syslog events to the SEC:

logging host {{interface_name}} {{SEC_ip_address}} tcp/{{port_number}}

logging host {{interface_name}} {{SEC_ip_address}} udp/{{port)_number}}

(Optional) If you use TCP, you can add this command to your list of commands in your macro. It does not need any parameters.

logging permit-hostdown

Step 3

Specify which syslog messages should be sent to the syslog server.

Use the logging trap command to specify which syslog messages should be sent to the syslog server:

logging trap{ severity_level| message_list}

If you want to define the events sent to the SEC by severity level, turn the command into this macro:

logging trap {{severity_level}}

If you only want to send events to the SEC that are part of a message list, turn the command into this macro:

logging trap {{message_list_name}}

If you chose the logging trap message_list command in the previous step, you need to define the syslogs in your message list. Open Create a Custom Event List so you can read the command descriptions as you create the macro. Start with this command:

logging listname{ levellevel[ classmessage_class]| messagestart_id[ -end_id]}

And break it down into these variations:

logging list {{message_list_name}} level {{security_level}}

logging list {{message_list_name}} level {{security_level}} class {{message_class}}

logging list {{message_list_name}} message {{syslog_range_or_number}}

In the last variation, the message parameter {{syslog_range_or_number}} could be entered as a single syslog ID, 106023, or a range, 302013-302018. Use one or more of the command variations in as many lines as you like to create your message list. Keep in mind that, in a single macro, all parameters with the same name will use the same value you enter. CDO will not run a macro with empty parameters.

Important

 

The logging list command has to come before the logging trap command in your macro. You define the list first and then the logging trap command can use it. See the sample macro below.

Step 4

(Optional) Add the syslog timestamp. Add this command if you want to add the date and time to the message that the syslog message originated on the ASA. The timestamp value is displayed in the SyslogTimestamp field. Add this command to your list of commands, it will not need any parameters:

logging timestamp

Note

 

Beginning with version 9.10(1), ASA provides the option to enable timestamp as per RFC 5424 in eventing syslogs. When this option is enabled, all timestamp of syslog messages would be displaying the time as per RFC 5424 format. Following is a sample output with RFC 5424 format: 

 <166>2018-06-27T12:17:46Z asa : %ASA-6-110002: Failed to locate egress interface for protocol from src interface :src IP/src port to dest IP/dest port
.

Step 5

(Optional) Include a device ID in non-EMBLEM format syslog messages. Open Include the Device ID in Non-EMBLEM Format Syslog Messages so you can read the command descriptions as you create the macro. This is the CLI command you will base your macro on:

logging device-id{ cluster-id| context-name| hostname| ipaddress interface_name [ system]| stringtext}

And break it down into these variations:

logging device-id cluster-id

logging device-id context-name

logging device-id hostname

logging device-id ipaddress {{interface_name}} system

logging device-id string {{text_16_char_or_less}}

Step 6

Enable logging. Add this command to your macro as it is. It does not have any parameters:

logging enable

Step 7

Do not add write memory to the last line of the macro. Add the show running-config logging command instead to review the results of the logging commands you entered before committing them to the ASA's startup config.

show running-config logging

Step 8

After you are confident your configuration changes were made, you can create a separate macro for the write memory command or use CDO's Bulk Command Line Interface function to issue the command to all the devices you configured using your macro.

write memory

Step 9

(Optional) Enable logging on access control rule "permit" events. This step in the described in the Send ASA Syslog Events to the Cisco Cloud procedure but it is not included in this macro. It is performed in the CDO GUI instead.

Step 10

Save the macro.

Example

Here is a sample of a list of commands combined into a single macro:


logging host {{interface_name}} {{SEC_ip_address}} {{tcp_or_udp}}/{{port_number}} 
logging permit-hostdown 
logging list {{message_list_name}} level {{security_level}} 
logging list {{message_list_name}} message {{syslog_range_or_number_1}} 
logging list {{message_list_name}} message {{syslog_range_or_number_2}} 
logging trap {{message_list_name}} 
logging device-id cluster-id 
logging enable 
show running-config logging

Note

There are several logging list commands to add different specific syslog IDs or ranges. The {{syslog_range_or_number_X}} parameter requires a number or some other differentiator, otherwise their values will all be the same when the macro is filled in. Also keep in mind that CDO will not run a macro if not all the parameters are given a value, so only include the commands in the macro you want to execute. We do want all the syslog IDs contained in the same list so event_list_name stays the same for in each line.

What to do next

Run the Macro

After you have created and saved the ASA Security Analytics and Logging Macro, run the macro to send ASA syslog events to the Cisco cloud.

Send ASA Syslog Events to the Cisco Cloud Using the Command Line Interface

This procedure explains how to forward ASA syslog events to a Secure Event Connector (SEC) and then enable logging. These procedures explain only what is needed to complete that workflow. For a broader discussion of all the ways you can configure logging on the ASA, see the Monitoring chapter of either ASDM1: Cisco ASA Series General Operations ASDM Configuration Guide or CLI Book 1: Cisco ASA Series General Operations CLI Configuration Guide.

Limitations on Supported ASA Commands

CDO does not yet support these syslog commands or message formats:

  • EMBLEM format for syslogs

  • Secure Syslogs

CDO Command Line Interface for ASA

For all the tasks in this procedure, you will be working on the CDO's command line interface for ASA. To open the command line interface page:

Procedure

Step 1

From the left navigation bar, click Inventory.

Step 2

Click the Devices tab.

Step 3

Click the appropriate device type tab and select the ASA for which you want to enable logging.

Step 4

In the Device Actions pane on the right, click >_ Command Line Interface.

Step 5

Click the Command Line Interface tab. You are now ready to enter the commands described below at the prompt.

After entering every command, you will click Send. Because CDO's CLI Interface is a direct connection to the ASA, the command is written to the device's running configuration immediately. For changes to be written to the ASA's startup configuration, you need to issue the write memory command in addition.

Forward ASA Syslog Events to the Secure Event Connector

To forward ASA syslog events to one of the Secure Event Connectors (SECs) you have onboarded and then enable logging, you need complete these tasks in the procedure that follows.

Procedure

Step 1

Configure the ASA to send messages to the SEC as if it were a syslog server.

Step 2

Decide what severity level of all logs, or what list of syslog events, you want to send to the SEC.

Step 3

Enable logging.

Step 4

Save the changes to the ASA's startup config.

Send ASA Syslog Events to the Cisco Cloud Using CLI

Procedure

Step 1

Configure the ASA to send messages to the SEC as if it were a syslog server

When sending syslog events from the ASA to the Cisco cloud, you forward them to the SEC as if it were an external syslog server, and it forwards the messages to the Cisco cloud.

To send syslog messages to the SEC, perform the following steps:

  1. Configure the ASA to send messages, using TCP or UDP, to the SEC as if it were a syslog server. The SEC can use an IPv4 or IPv6 addresss. You will be sending events to either a TCP or UDP port. See Finding Your Device's TCP, UDP, and NSEL Port Used for Cisco Security Analytics and Logging to determine what ports you should use.

    Here is an example of the logging host command syntax:

    logging host interface_name SEC_IP_address [[ tcp/port ]|[ udp/port ]]

    Examples:

    
 > logging host mgmt 192.168.1.5 tcp/10125 
> logging host mgmt 192.168.1.5 udp/10025 
> logging host mgmt 2002::1:1 tcp/10125 
> logging host mgmt 2002::1:1 udp/10025

    • The interface_name argument specifies the ASA interface from which messages are sent to the syslog server. It is a "best practice" to send the syslog messages to the SDC over the same ASA interface already in use for communication with the SDC.

    • The SEC_IP_address argument should contain the IP address of the VM on which the SEC is installed.

    • The tcp/port or udp/port keyword-argument pair specifies that syslog messages should be sent using either TCP protocol and relevant port, or the UDP protocol and relevant port. You can configure the ASA to send data to a syslog server using either UDP or TCP, but not both. The default protocol is UDP if you do not specify a protocol.

      If you specify TCP, the ASA will discover syslog server failures and as a security protection, new connections through the ASA are blocked. To allow new connections regardless of connectivity to a TCP syslog server, see step b. If you specify UDP, the ASA continues to allow new connections whether or not the syslog server is operational. Valid port values

      Note

       

      If you want to send ASA messages to two separate syslog servers, you can run a second logging host command with the appropriate interface, IP address, protocol and port of the other syslog server.

  2. (Optional) If you send events to the SEC over TCP, and if either the SEC is down or the log queue on the ASA is full, then new connections are blocked. New connections are allowed again after the syslog server is back up and the log queue is no longer full. To allow new connections regardless of connectivity to a TCP syslog server, disable the feature to block new connections when a TCP-connected syslog server is down using this command:

    logging permit-hostdown

    Example:

     > logging permit-hostdown

Step 2

Specify which syslog messages should be sent to the syslog server with the following command:

logging trap { severity_level | message_list }

Examples:

> logging trap 3 
> logging trap asa_syslogs_to_cloud

You can specify the severity level number (1 through 7) or name. For example, if you set the severity level to 3, then the ASA sends syslog messages for severity levels 3, 2, and 1.

The message_list argument is replaced with the name of a custom event list, if you have created one. When specifying a custom event list, you only send the syslog messages that are in that list to the Secure Event Connector. In the example above, asa_syslogs_to_cloud is the name of the event list.

Using a message_list could save you money by tightly defining which syslog messages are sent to the Cisco cloud.

See Create a Custom Event List to create a message_list. See Security Analytics and Logging Event Storage for more information about data ingest and storage costs.

Step 3

(Optional) Add the syslog timestamp

Add the date and time that the syslog message originated on the ASA to the message using the logging timestamp command. The timestamp value is displayed in the SyslogTimestamp field.

Example: 

> logging timestamp

Note

 

Beginning with version 9.10(1), ASA provides the option to enable timestamp as per RFC 5424 in eventing syslogs. When this option is enabled, all timestamp of syslog messages would be displaying the time as per RFC 5424 format. Following is a sample output with RFC 5424 format: 

<166>2018-06-27T12:17:46Z asa : %ASA-6-110002: Failed to locate egress interface for protocol from src interface :src IP/src port to dest IP/dest port.

Step 4

(Optional) Include a device ID in non-EMBLEM format syslog messages

A device ID is an identifier you can insert in a syslog message that will help you easily distinguish all syslog messages sent from a particular ASA. See Include the Device ID in Non-EMBLEM Format Syslog Messages for instructions.

Step 5

(Optional) Enable logging on access control rule "permit" events

When an access control rule denies access to a resource, the event is automatically logged. If you also want to log events generated when an access control rule allows access to a resource, you need to turn on logging for the access control rule and configure a severity type. See Log Rule Activity for instructions on how to turn on logging for an individual network access control rule.

Note

 

Enabling logging on access control rule "permit" events will use-up more of your purchased data plan as it is based on your daily ingest rate of events.

Step 6

Enable logging

At the command prompt, type logging enable. On the ASA, logging is enabled for the entire device, not for individual rules.

Example:

 > logging enable

Note

 

At this time, CDO does not support enabling secure logging.

Step 7

Save your Changes to the Startup Config

At the command prompt, type write memory. On the ASA, logging is enabled for the entire device, not for individual rules.

Example:

> write memory

Create a Custom Event List

Create a custom event list when you are sending ASA syslog events to the Cisco Cloud using one of these methods:

You can create an event list, also referred to as a message_list, based on the following three criteria:

  • Event Class

  • Severity

  • Message ID

To create a custom event list to send to a specific logging destination (for example, a syslog server or a Secure Event Connector), perform the following steps:

Procedure

Step 1

From the left navigation bar, click Inventory.

Step 2

Click the Devices tab.

Step 3

Click the appropriate tab and select the ASA whose syslog messages you want to include in a custom event list.

Step 4

In the Device Actions pane, click >_ Command Line Interface.

Step 5

Use this command syntax to issue the logging list command to the ASA:

logging list name { level level [ class message_class ]| message start_id [ -end_id ]}

The name argument specifies the name of the list. The level level keyword and argument pair specify the severity level. The class message_class keyword-argument pair specify a particular message class. The message start_id [-end_id] keyword-argument pair specify an individual syslog message number or a range of numbers.

Note

 

Do not use the names of severity levels as the name of a syslog message list. Prohibited names include emergencies, alert, critical, error, warning, notification, informational, and debugging. Similarly, do not use the first three characters of these words at the beginning of an event list name. For example, do not use an event list name that starts with the characters "err."

  • Add syslog messages to the event list based on severity. For example, if you set the severity level to 3, then the ASA sends syslog messages for severity levels 3, 2, and 1.

    Example:

    > logging list asa_syslogs_to_cloud level 3

  • Add syslog messages based on other criteria to the event list:

    Enter the same command as in the previous step, specifying the name of the existing message list and the additional criterion. Enter a new command for each criterion that you want to add to the list. For example, you can specify criteria for syslog messages to be included in the list as the following:

    • Syslog message IDs that fall into the range of 302013-302018.

    • All syslog messages with the critical severity level or higher (emergency, alert, or critical).

    • All HA class syslog messages with the warning severity level or higher (emergency, alert, critical, error, or warning).

      Example:

      > logging list asa_syslogs_to_cloud message 302013-302018 
> logging list asa_syslogs_to_cloud level critical 
> logging list asa_syslogs_to_cloud level warning class ha

      Note

       

      A syslog message is logged if it satisfies any of these conditions. If a syslog message satisfies more than one of the conditions, the message is logged only once.

Step 6

Save your Changes to the Startup Config

At the command prompt, type write memory.

Example:

> write memory

Include the Device ID in Non-EMBLEM Format Syslog Messages

You can configure the ASA to include a device ID in non-EMBLEM-format syslog messages. You can specify only one type of device ID for syslog messages. This procedure is referred to by these procedures:

This device identifier will be reflected in the SensorID field of a syslog event displayed on the Event Logging page.

Procedure

Step 1

Select the ASA whose syslog messages you want to assign a device-id to.

Step 2

In the Device Actions pane, click >_ Command Line Interface.

Step 3

Use this command syntax to issue the logging device-id commands to the device.

logging device-id{ cluster-id| context-name| hostname| ipaddressinterface_name[ system]| stringtext}

Example:

> logging device-id hostname 
> logging device-id context-name 
> logging device-id string Cambridge

The context-name keyword indicates that the name of the current context should be used as the device ID (applies to multiple context mode only). If you enable the logging device ID for the admin context in multiple context mode, messages that originate in the system execution space use a device ID of system, and messages that originate in the admin context use the name of the admin context as the device ID.

Note

 

In an ASA cluster, always use the primary unit IP address for the selected interface.

The cluster-id keyword specifies the unique name in the boot configuration of an individual ASA unit in the cluster as the device ID.

The hostname keyword specifies that the hostname of the ASA should be used as the device ID.

The ipaddress interface_name keyword-argument pair specifies that the interface IP address specified as interface_name should be used as the device ID. If you use the ipaddress keyword, the device ID becomes the specified ASA interface IP address, regardless of the interface from which the syslog message is sent. In the cluster environment, the system keyword dictates that the device ID becomes the system IP address on the interface. This keyword provides a single, consistent device ID for all syslog messages that are sent from the device.

The string text keyword-argument pair specifies that the text string should be used as the device ID. The string can include as many as 16 characters.

You cannot use blank spaces or any of the following characters:

  • & (ampersand)

  • ‘ (single quote)

  • " (double quote)

  • < (less than)

  • > (greater than)

  • ? (question mark)

Step 4

Save your Changes to the Startup Config

At the command prompt, type write memory.

Example:

  > write memory

NetFlow Secure Event Logging (NSEL) for ASA Devices

Basic syslog messages from the ASA lack much of the data that Secure Cloud Analytics needs to determine if events reported by the ASA indicate a threat. Netflow Secure Event Logging (NSEL) provides the Secure Cloud Analytics with that data.

"A flow is defined as a unidirectional sequence of packets with some common properties that pass through a network device. These collected flows are exported to an external device, the NetFlow collector. Network flows are highly granular; for example, flow records include details such as IP addresses, packet and byte counts, timestamps, Type of Service (ToS), application ports, input and output interfaces, etc."1

The Cisco ASA supports NetFlow Version 9 services. The ASA implementation of NSEL provides a stateful, IP flow tracking method that exports only those records that indicate significant events in a flow. In stateful flow tracking, tracked flows go through a series of state changes.

This documentation describes a straight forward approach to configuring NetFlow for your ASAs using a CDO macro. The Cisco ASA NetFlow Implementation Guide provides an extremely detailed discussion of configuring NetFlow on the ASA and you may find it a valuable resource to accompany this content.

What to do Next

Go to Configuring NSEL for ASA Devices Using a CDO Macro.

Related Articles

1. ("Cisco Systems NetFlow Services Export Version 9." Internet Engineering Task Force, Network Working Group, Request for Comments: 3954, October 2004, B. Claise, Ed. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3954.txt)

Configuring NSEL for ASA Devices by Using a CDO Macro

ASAs report detailed connection event data using Netflow Secure Event Logging (NSEL). You can apply Secure Cloud Analytics to this connection event data, which includes bidirectional flow statistics. This procedure describes how to configure NSEL on an ASA device and send those NSEL events to a flow collector. In this case, the flow collector is a Secure Event Connector (SEC).

This procedure refers to this macro, Configure NSEL: 

 flow-export destination {{interface}} {{SEC_IPv4_address}} {{SEC_NetFlow_port}}
flow-export template timeout-rate {{timeout_rate_in_mins}}
flow-export delay flow-create {{delay_flow_create_rate_in_secs}}
flow-export active refresh-interval {{refresh_interval_in_mins}}
class-map {{flow_export_class_name}}
     match {{add_this_traffic_to_class_map}}
policy-map {{global_policy_map_name}}
     class {{flow_export_class_name}}
          flow-export event-type {{event_type}} destination {{SEC_IPv4_address}}
service-policy {{global_policy_map_name}} global
logging flow-export-syslogs disable
show run flow-export
show run policy-map {{global_policy_map_name}}
show run class-map {{flow_export_class_name}}

Here is an example of the Configure NSEL macro with all the default values filled in, a generic name for the class-map, and the class map added to the global_policy, When you are done with these procedures, your macro will resemble this: 

 flow-export destination {{interface}} {{SEC_IPv4_address}} {{SEC_NetFlow_port}}
flow-export template timeout-rate 60
flow-export delay flow-create 55
flow-export active refresh-interval 1
class-map flow_export_class_map
     match any
policy-map global_policy
     class flow_export_class_map
          flow-export event-type all destination {{SEC_IPv4_address}}
logging flow-export-syslogs disable
show run flow-export
show run policy-map global_policy
show run class-map flow_export_class_map

Before you Begin

Gather the following information:

Workflow

Follow this workflow to configure NSEL for ASA devices by using a CDO macro. You need to follow each step:

  1. Open the Configuring NSEL Macro.

  2. Define the Destination of NSEL Messages and the Interval at Which They Are Sent to the SEC.

  3. Create a Class-Map that Defines which NSEL Events Will Be Sent to the SEC.

  4. Define a Policy-Map for NSEL Events.

  5. Disable Redundant Syslog Messages.

  6. Review and Send the Macro.

What to do next

Begin the workflow above by going to Open the Configuring NSEL Macro.

Open the Configuring NSEL Macro

Before you begin
This is first part in a longer workflow, see Configuring NSEL for ASA Devices by Using a CDO Macro before getting started.
Procedure

Step 1

On the Inventory page, click the Devices tab.

Step 2

Click the appropriate device type tab and select the ASA(s) on which you want to configure NetFlow Secure Event Logging (NSEL).

Step 3

In the Device Actions pane, click Command Line Interface.

Step 4

Click the Macro star to show the list of available macros.

Step 5

From the list of macros, select Configuring NSEL.

Step 6

Under the Macro box, click View Parameters.

What to do next
Continue to Define the Destination of NSEL Messages and the Interval at Which They Are Sent to the SEC.

Define the Destination of NSEL Messages and the Interval at Which They Are Sent to the SEC

NSEL messages can be sent to any one of the SECs you have onboarded to your tenant. These instructions refer to this section of the macro:

flow-export destination {{interface}} {{SEC_IPv4_address}} {{SEC_NetFlow_port}}

flow-export template timeout-rate {{timeout_rate_in_mins}}

flow-export delay flow-create {{delay_flow_create_rate_in_secs}}

flow-export active refresh-interval {{refresh_interval_in_mins}}

Before you begin
This is part of a larger workflow. See Configuring NSEL for ASA Devices by Using a CDO Macro before getting started.
Procedure

Step 1

The flow-export destination command defines the collector to which the NetFlow packets are sent. In this case, you are sending them to an SEC. Fill in the fields for these parameters:

  • {{interface}}-Enter the name of the interface on the ASA from which the NetFlow events are sent.

  • {{SEC_IPv4_address}}-Enter the IPv4 address of the SEC. The SEC functions as the flow collector.

  • {{SEC_NetFlow_port}}-Enter the UDP port number on the SEC to which NetFlow packets are sent.

Step 2

The flow-export template timeout-rate command specifies the interval at which template records are sent to all configured output destinations.

  • {{timeout_rate_in_mins}}-Enter the number of minutes before templates are resent. We recommend using a value of 60 minutes. The SEC does not process the templates. A large number reduces traffic to the SEC.

Step 3

The flow-export delay flow-create command delays the sending of flow-create events by the specified number of seconds. This value matches the recommended Active Timeout value and reduces the number of flow events exported from the ASA. At that rate, expect NSEL events to first appear in CDO at the close of a connection or within 55 seconds of the creation of the connection, whichever happens earlier. If this command is not configured, there is no delay, and the flow-create event is exported as soon as the flow is created.

  • {{delay_flow_create_rate_in_secs}}-Enter the number of seconds delay between sending flow-create events. We recommend using a value of 55 seconds.

Step 4

The flow-export active refresh-interval command defines the frequency that status updates for long-lived flows will be sent from ASA. Valid values are from 1-60 minutes. In the Flow Update Interval field, configuring the flow-export active refresh-interval to be at least 5 seconds more than the flow-export delay flow-create interval prevents flow-update events from appearing before flow-creation events.

  • {{refresh_interval_in_mins}}-We recommend using a value of 1 minute. Valid values are from 1-60 minutes.

What to do next
Continue to Create a Class-Map that Defines which NSEL Events Will Be Sent to the SEC.

Create a Class-Map that Defines which NSEL Events Will Be Sent to the SEC

The following commands in the macro group all NSEL events in a class and then export that class to the Secure Event Connector (SEC). These instructions refer to this section of the macro:

class-map {{flow_export_class_name}}

match {{add_this_traffic_to_class_map}}

Before you begin
This is part of a larger workflow. See Configuring NSEL for ASA Devices by Using a CDO Macro before getting started.
Procedure

Step 1

The class-map command names the class map that identifies NSEL traffic that will be exported to the SEC.

  • {{flow-export-class-name}}-Enter a name for your class map. The name may be up to 40 characters in length. The names "class-default" and any name that begins with "_internal" or "_default" are reserved. All types of class maps use the same name space, so you cannot re-use a name already used by another type of class map.

Step 2

Identify the traffic that is going to be associated with (matched with) your class-map. Choose one of these options for the value of {{add_this_traffic_to_class_map}}:
What to do next
Continue to, Define a Policy-Map for NSEL Events.

Define a Policy-Map for NSEL Events

The task assigns NetFlow export actions to the class you created in the previous task, and the class to a new policy map. These instructions refer to this section of the macro:

policy-map {{global_policy_map_name}}

class {{flow_export_class_name}}

flow-export event-type {{event_type}} destination {{SEC_IPv4_address}}

Before you begin
This is part of a larger workflow. See Configuring NSEL for ASA Devices by Using a CDO Macro before getting started.
Procedure

Step 1

The policy-map command creates a policy-map. In the next task, you associate this policy map with the global policy.

Step 2

The class command inherits the name of the class-map you created in Create a Class-Map that Defines which NSEL Events Will Be Sent to the SEC.

Step 3

The flow-export event-type {{event-type}} destination {{IPv4_address}} command defines which event types should be sent to flow collector, (in this case the SEC).

What to do next
Continue to, Disable Redundant Syslog Messages.

Disable Redundant Syslog Messages

These instructions refer to this section of the macro. You do not need to modify the command.

logging flow-export-syslogs disable

Enabling NetFlow to export flow information makes the syslog messages in the following table redundant. In the interest of performance, we recommend that you disable redundant syslog messages, because the same information is exported through NetFlow.


Note

When NSEL and syslog messages are both enabled, there is no guarantee of chronological ordering between the two logging types.

Syslog Message

Description

NSEL Event ID

NSEL Extended Event ID

106100

Generated whenever an access control rule (ACL) is encountered.

1-Flow was created (if the ACL allowed the flow).

3-Flow was denied (if the ACL denied the flow).

0-If the ACL allowed the flow.

1001-Flow was denied by the ingress ACL.

1002-Flow was denied by the egress ACL.

106015

A TCP flow was denied because the first packet was not a SYN packet.

3-Flow was denied.

1004-Flow was denied because the first packet was not a TCP SYN packet.

106023

When a flow was denied by an ACL attached to an interface through the access-group command.

3-Flow was denied.

1001-Flow was denied by the ingress ACL.

1002-Flow was denied by the egress ACL.

302013, 302015, 302017, 302020

TCP, UDP, GRE, and ICMP connection creation.

1-Flow was created.

0-Ignore.

302014, 302016, 302018, 302021

TCP, UDP, GRE, and ICMP connection teardown.

2-Flow was deleted.

0-Ignore.

> 2000-Flow was torn down.

313001

An ICMP packet to the device was denied.

3-Flow was denied.

1003-To-the-box flow was denied because of configuration.

313008

An ICMP v6 packet to the device was denied.

3-Flow was denied.

1003-To-the-box flow was denied because of configuration.

710003

An attempt to connect to the device interface was denied.

3-Flow was denied.

1003-To-the-box flow was denied because of configuration.

If you do not want to disable redundant syslog messages, you can edit this macro and delete only this line from it:

logging flow-export-syslogs disable

You can later enable or disable individual syslog messages by following the procedure in the Disabling and Reenabling NetFlow-related Syslog Messages.

Review and Send the Macro

Before you begin
This is part of a larger workflow. See Configuring NSEL for ASA Devices by Using a CDO Macro, before getting started.
Procedure

Step 1

After filling in the fields of the macro, click Review to review the commands before they are sent to the ASA.

Step 2

If you are satisfied with your responses to the commands, click Send.

Step 3

After you send the command, you may see the message, "Some commands may have made changes to the running config" along with two links.

  • Clicking Write to Disk saves the changes made by this command, and any other changes in the running-configuration, to the device's startup configuration.

  • Clicking Dismiss dismisses the message.

You have finished the workflow descried in Configuring NSEL for ASA Devices by Using a CDO Macro.

Delete NetFlow Secure Event Logging (NSEL) Configuration from an ASA

This procedure explains how to DELETE the NetFlow Secure Event Logging (NSEL) Configuration on an ASA, which specifies the Secure Event Connector (SEC) as the NSEL flow collector. This procedure reverses the macro described in Configuring NSEL for ASA Devices Using a CDO Macro.

This procedure refers to this macro, DELETE NSEL: 

policy-map {{flow_export_policy_name}} 
no class {{flow_export_class_name}} 
no class-map {{flow_export_class_name}} 
no flow-export destination {{interface}} {{IPv4_address}} {{NetFlow_port}} 
no flow-export template timeout-rate {{timeout_rate_in_mins}} 
no flow-export delay flow-create {{delay_flow_create_rate_in_secs}} 
no flow-export active refresh-interval {{refresh_interval_in_mins}} 
logging flow-export-syslogs enable 
show run flow-export 
show run policy-map {{flow_export_policy_name}} 
show run class-map {{flow_export_class_name}}

Open the DELETE-NSEL Macro

Procedure

Step 1

On the Inventory page, click the Devices tab.

Step 2

Click the appropriate device type tab and select the ASA(s) on which you want to delete the configuration of NetFlow Secure Event Logging (NSEL).

Step 3

In the Device Actions pane, click Command Line Interface.

Step 4

Click the Macros star to show the list of available macros.

Step 5

In the list of macros, select DELETE-NSEL.

Step 6

Under the Macro box, click View Parameters.

Enter the Values in the Macro to Complete the No Commands

The ASA CLI uses the "no" form of a command to delete it. Fill in the fields in the macro to complete the "no" form of the command:

Procedure

Step 1

policy-map {{flow_export_policy_name}}

  • {{flow_export_policy_name}}-Enter the value of the policy-map name.

Step 2

no class {{flow_export_class_name}}

  • {{flow_export_class_name}}-Enter the value of the class-map name.

Step 3

no class-map {{flow_export_class_name}}

  • {{flow_export_class_name}}-The value of the class-map name is inherited from the step above.

Step 4

no flow-export destination {{interface}} {{IPv4_address}} {{NetFlow_port}}

  • {{interface}}-Enter the name of the interface on the ASA from which the NetFlow events were sent.

  • {{IPv4_address}}-Enter the IPv4 address of the SEC. The SEC functions as the flow collector.

  • {{NetFlow_port}}-Enter the UDP port number on the SEC to which NetFlow packets were sent.

Step 5

no flow-export template timeout-rate {{timeout_rate_in_mins}}

  • {{timeout_rate_in_mins}}-Enter the flow-export template timeout-rate.

Step 6

no flow-export delay flow-create {{delay_flow_create_rate_in_secs}}

  • {{delay_flow_create_rate_in_secs}}-Enter the flow-export delay flow-create rate.

Step 7

no flow-export active refresh-interval {{refresh_interval_in_mins}}

  • {{refresh_interval_in_mins}}-Enter the flow-export active refresh-interval interval.

Determine the Name of an ASA Global Policy

To determine the name of the ASA's global policy, follow this procedure:

Procedure

Step 1

From the Inventory page, select the device for which you want to find the name of the global policy.

Step 2

In the Device Actions pane, select >_Command Reference.

Step 3

In the Command Line Interface window, at the prompt, type:

show running-config service-policy

In the output of the example below, global_policy is the name of the global policy.

Example:

> show running-config service-policy

service-policy global_policy global

Troubleshooting NSEL Data Flows

Once you have configured Netflow Secure Event Logging (NSEL) , use these procedures to verify that NSEL events are being sent from your ASA to the Cisco Cloud and that the Cisco Cloud is receiving them.

Note that once your ASA is configured to send NSEL events to the Secure Event Connector (SEC) and then on to the Cisco Cloud, data does not flow immediately. It could take a few minutes for the first NSEL packets to arrive assuming there is NSEL-related traffic being generated on the ASA.


Note

This workflow shows you a straight-forward use of the "flow-export counters" command and "capture" commands to Troubleshoot NSEL Data Flows. See "Packet Captures" CLI Book 1: Cisco ASA Series General Operations CLI Configuration Guide and "Monitoring NSEL" in the Cisco ASA NetFlow Implementation Guide for a more detailed discussion of the usage of these commands.

Perform these tasks:

  • Verify that NetFlow Packets are Being Sent to the SEC

  • Verify that NetFlow Packets are Being Received by the Cisco Cloud

Verify that NSEL Events are Being Sent to the SEC

Use one of two commands to verify that NSEL packets are being sent to the SEC:

  • flow-export counters

  • capture

Use the "flow-export counters" Command to Check for flow-export Packets Being Sent and for NSEL errors

Use the command line interface in CDO to send these commands to the ASAs that you have configured for NSEL.

Procedure

Step 1

In the navigation pane, click Inventory.

Step 2

Click the Devices tab.

Step 3

Click the appropriate device tab and select the ASA you configured to send NSEL events to the SEC.

Step 4

In the Device Actions pane on the right, click Command Line Interface.

Step 5

Reset the flow export counters by running the clear flow-export counters command. This resets the clear export flow counters to zero so that you can easily tell if new events are coming in.

example:

> clear flow-export counters

Done!

Step 6

Run the show flow-export counters command to see the destination of the NSEL packets, how many packets were sent and any errors:

example:

>show flow-export counters

destination: management 209.165.200.225 10425

Statistics:

packets sent 25000

Errors:

block allocation errors 0

invalid interface 0

template send failure 0

no route to collector 0

source port allocation 0

In the output above, the destination line shows the interface on the ASA from which NSEL events are sent, the IP address of the SEC, port 10425 of the SEC. It also shows packets sent of 25000.

If there are no errors and packets are being sent, skip to Verify that NetFlow Packets are Being Received by the Cisco Cloud below.

Error descriptions:

  • block allocation errors-If you receive a block allocation error, the ASA did not allocate memory to the flow-exporter.

    • Recovery action: Call Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC).

  • invalid interface-Indicates that you are trying to send NSEL events to the SEC but the interface you've defined for flow export isn't configured to do so.

    • Recovery action: Review the interface you chose when configuring NSEL. We recommend using the management interface, your interface may be different.

  • template send failure-The template you had to define NSEL was not parsed correctly.

  • no route to collector-Indicates there is no network route from the ASA to the SEC.

    • Recovery actions:

      • Make sure that the IP address you used for the SEC when you configured NSEL is correct.

      • Make sure the SEC's status is Active and it has sent a recent heartbeat. See SDC is Unreachable.

      • Make sure the Secure Device Connector's status is Active and it has sent a recent heartbeat.

  • source port allocation-May indicate that there is a bad port on your ASA.

Use the "capture" Command to Capture NSEL Packets Sent from the ASA to the SEC

Use the command line interface in CDO to send these commands to the ASAs that you have configured for NSEL.

Procedure

Step 1

In the navigation pane, click Inventory.

Step 2

Click the Devices tab.

Step 3

Click the appropriate device type tab and select the ASA you configured to send NSEL events to the SEC.

Step 4

In the Device Actions pane on the right, click Command Line Interface.

Step 5

In the command window, run this capture command:

> capturecapture_nameinterfaceinterface_name match udp any host IP_of_SECeqNetFlow_port

Where

  • capture_name is the name of the packet capture.

  • interface_name is the name of the interface from which NSEL packets leave the ASA.

  • IP_of_SEC is the IP address of the SEC VM.

  • NetFlow_port is the port to which NSEL events are sent.

This starts the packet capture.

Step 6

Run the show capture command to view the captured packets:

> show capturecapture_name

Where capture_name is the name of the packet capture you defined in the previous step.

Here is an example of the output showing the time of the capture, the IP address from which the packet was sent, the IP address, and the port the packet was sent to. In this example, 192.168.25.4 is the IP address of the SEC and port 10425 is the port on the SEC that receives NSEL events.

6 packets captured

1: 14:23:51.706308 192.168.0.169.16431 > 192.168.25.4.10425: udp 476

2: 14:23:53.923017 192.168.0.169.16431 > 192.168.25.4.10425: udp 248

3: 14:24:07.411904 192.168.0.169.16431 > 192.168.25.4.10425: udp 1436

4: 14:24:07.411920 192.168.0.169.16431 > 192.168.25.4.10425: udp 1276

5: 14:24:21.021208 192.168.0.169.16431 > 192.168.25.4.10425: udp 112

6: 14:24:27.444755 192.168.0.169.16431 > 192.168.25.4.10425: udp 196

Step 7

Run the capture stop command to manually stop the packet capture:

> capture capture_namestop

Where capture_name is the name of the packet capture you defined in the previous step.

Verify that NetFlow Packets are Being Received by the Cisco Cloud

Before you Begin

Verify that NSEL events are being sent from the ASA.

Check for Live NSEL Events

Check for both live and historical events.

This procedure will filter for NSEL events that the Cisco Cloud has received within the last hour.

Procedure

Step 1

In the left pane, choose Analytics > Event Logging.

Step 2

Click the Live tab.

Step 3

Pin-open the event filter.

Step 4

In the ASA Events section, make sure NetFlow is checked.

Step 5

In the Sensor ID field, enter the IP address of the ASA you configured to send NSEL events.

Step 6

At the bottom of the filter, make sure that Include NetFlow Events is checked.

Check for Historical NSEL Events

This procedure will filter for NSEL events that the Cisco Cloud has received within the time-frame you specify.

Procedure

Step 1

In the left pane, choose Analytics > Event Logging.

Step 2

Click the Historical tab.

Step 3

Pin-open the event filter.

Step 4

In the ASA Events section, make sure NetFlow is checked.

Step 5

Set the Start time far enough back in time to check if CDO ever did receive NSEL events.

Step 6

In the Sensor ID field, enter the IP address of the ASA you configured to send NSEL events.

Step 7

At the bottom of the filter, make sure that Include NetFlow events is checked.

Parsed ASA Syslog Events

Parsed syslog events contain more event attributes than other syslog events and let you search on any specific parsed field. The SEC forwards all ASA events you specify to the Cisco cloud but only the syslog messages in the table below are parsed. All parsed Syslogs events are shown with their EvenTypes italicised to help you identify.

For detailed explanations of syslogs see, Cisco ASA Series Syslog Messages.

Syslog ID

Syslog Category

Purpose of syslog messge

106015

Firewall

Represents out of state TCP Deny

106023

Firewall

A real IP packet was denied by the ACL. This message appears even if you do not have the log option enabled for an ACL.

106100

Access Lists/User Session

Packet was permitted or denied by an ACL.

113019

User Authentication

Critical AnyConnect

302013, 302015, 302017, 302020

User Session

Connection start and end syslogs for TCP, UDP, GRE, and ICMP connection creation.

302014, 302016, 302018, 302021

User Session

Connection start and end syslogs for TCP, UDP, GRE, and ICMP connection creation.

302020 - 302021

User Session

ICMP session establishment and teardown.

305006

User Session/NAT and PAT

NAT connection failure

305011-305014

User Session/NAT and PAT

NAT Build/Teardown related

313001, 313008

IP Stack

Represents denied connections to the box.

414004

System

Critical AnyConnect

609001 - 609002

Firewall

A network state container was reserved/removed for host ip-address connected to a zone.

710002,710004 710005

User Session

To the box connections failures

710003

User Session

Represents denied connections to the box.

746012, 746013

User Session

Critical AnyConnect

Secure Event Connectors

The Secure Event Connector (SEC) is a component of the Security Analytics and Logging SaaS solution. It receives events from ASA , and FDM-managed devices and forwards them to the Cisco cloud. CDO displays the events on the Event Logging page so that administrators can analyze them there or by using Cisco Secure Cloud analytics.

The SEC is installed on a Secure Device Connector deployed in your network, on its own CDO Connector virtual machine deployed in your network, or on an AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

Secure Event Connector ID

You may need the ID of the SEC when working with Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) or other CDO Support. That ID is found on the Secure Connectors page in CDO. To find the SEC ID:

  1. From the CDO menu on the left, choose Tools & Services > Secure Connectors.

  2. Click the SEC you wish to identify.

  3. The SEC ID is the ID listed above the Tenant ID in the Details pane.

Installing Secure Event Connectors

Secure Event Connectors (SECs) can be installed on a tenant with or without an SDC.

You can install one SEC on the same virtual machine as a Secure Device Connector, if you have one; or you can install the SEC on it's own CDO Connector virtual machine that you maintain in your network.

Install a Secure Event Connector on an SDC Virtual Machine

The Secure Event Connector (SEC) receives events from ASA and FDM-managed devices and forwards them to the Cisco cloud. CDO displays the events on the Event Logging page so that administrators can analyze them there or by using Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics.

You can install one SEC on the same virtual machine as a Secure Device Connector, if you have one; or you can install the SEC on it's own CDO Connector virtual machine that you maintain in your network.

This article describes installing an SEC on the same virtual machine as an SDC. If you want to install more SECs see Installing an SEC Using a CDO Image or Install an SEC Using Your VM Image.

Before you begin

  • Purchase the Cisco Security and Analytics Logging, Logging and Troubleshooting license. Or, If you want to try Cisco Security and Analytics Logging out first, log in to CDO, and on the main navigation bar, choose Analytics > Event Logging and click Request Trial. You may also purchase the Logging Analytics and Detection and Total Network Analytics and Monitoring licenses to apply Secure Cloud Analytics to the events.

  • Make sure your SDC has been installed. If you need to install an SDC, follow one of these procedures:

  • Make sure the SDC is communicating with CDO:

    1. In the left pane, click Tools & Services > Secure Connectors.

    2. Make sure that the SDC's last heartbeat was less than 10 minutes prior to the installation of the SEC and that the SDC's status is active.

  • System Requirements - Assign additional CPUs and memory to the virtual machine running the SDC:

    • CPU: Assign an additional 4 CPUs to accommodate the SEC to make a total of 6 CPU.

    • Memory: Assign an additional 8 GB of memory for the SEC to make a total of 10 GB of memory.

      After you have updated the CPU and memory on the VM to accommodate the SEC, power on the VM and ensure that the Secure Connectors page indicates that the SDC is in the "Active" state.

Procedure

Step 1

Log in to CDO.

Step 2

From the left pane, click Tools & Services > Secure Connectors.

Step 3

Click the icon and then click Secure Event Connector.

Step 4

Skip Step 1 of the wizard and go to Step 2. In step 2 of the wizard, click the link to Copy SEC Bootstrap Data.

Step 5

Open a terminal window and log into the SDC as the "cdo" user.

Step 6

Once logged in, switch to the "sdc" user. When prompted for a password, enter the password for the "cdo" user. Here is an example of those commands: 

[cdo@sdc-vm ~]$ sudo su sdc
[sudo] password for cdo: <type password for cdo user>
[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$

Step 7

At the prompt, run the sec.sh setup script: 

[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$ /usr/local/cdo/toolkit/sec.sh setup

Step 8

At the end of the prompt, paste the bootstrap data you copied in step 4 and press Enter. 

Please copy the bootstrap data from Setup Secure Event Connector page of CDO: KJHYFuYTFuIGhiJKlKnJHvHfgxTewrtwE
RtyFUiyIOHKNkJbKhvhgyRStwterTyufGUihoJpojP9UOoiUY8VHHGFXREWRtygfhVjhkOuihIuyftyXtfcghvjbkhB=

After the SEC is onboarded, the sec.sh runs a script to check on the health of the SEC. If all the health checks are "green," the health check sends a sample event to the Event Log. The sample event shows up in the Event Log as a policy named "sec-health-check."

If you receive a message that the registration failed or that the SEC onboarding failed, go to Troubleshooting Secure Event connector Onboarding Failures.

Step 9

Determine if the VM on which the SDC and SEC are running needs additional configuration:

What to do next

Return to Implementing Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) for ASA Devices .

Installing an SEC Using a CDO Image

The Secure Event Connector (SEC) forwards events from ASA and FTD to the Cisco cloud so that you can view them in the Event Logging page and investigate them with Secure Cloud Analytics, depending on your licensing.

You can install more than one Secure Event Connector (SEC) on your tenant and direct events from your ASAs and FDM-managed devices to any of the SECs you install. Having multiple SECs allows you to have SECs installed in different locations and distribute the work of sending events to the Cisco cloud.

Installing an SEC is a two part process:

  1. Install a CDO Connector, to Support a Secure Event Connector, Using a CDO VM Image You need one CDO Connector for every SEC you install. The CDO Connector is different than a Secure Device Connector (SDC).

  2. Install the Secure Event Connector on your CDO Connector Virtual Machine.


Note

If you want to create a CDO Connector by creating your own VM, see Install Multiple SECs for Your Tenant Using a VM Image you Create.

What to do next:

Continue with Install a CDO Connector, to Support a Secure Event Connector, Using a CDO VM Image

Install a CDO Connector, to Support a Secure Event Connector, Using a CDO VM Image

Before you begin

  • Purchase the Cisco Security and Analytics Logging, Logging and Troubleshooting license, you may also purchase the Logging Analytics and Detection and Total Network Analytics and Monitoring licenses to apply Secure Cloud Analytics to the events.

    If you would rather, you can request a trial version of Security Analytics and Logging by logging in to CDO, and on the main navigation bar, choose Analytics > Event Logging and click Request Trial.

  • CDO requires strict certificate checking and does not support Web/Content Proxy inspection between the CDO Connector and the Internet. If using a proxy server, disable inspection for traffic between the CDO Connector and CDO.

  • The CDO Connector installed in this process must have full outbound access to the Internet on TCP port 443.

  • Review Connect to CDO using Secure Device Connector to ensure proper network access for the CDO Connector.

  • CDO supports installing its CDO Connector VM OVF image using the vSphere web client or the ESXi web client.

  • CDO does not support installing the CDO Connector VM OVF image using the VM vSphere desktop client.

  • ESXi 5.1 hypervisor.

  • System requirements for a VM intended to host only a CDO Connector and an SEC:

    • VMware ESXi host needs 4 vCPU.

    • VMware ESXi host needs a minimum of 8 GB of memory.

    • VMware ESXi requires 64GB disk space to support the virtual machine depending on your provisioning choice.

  • Gather this information before you begin the installation:

    • Static IP address you want to use for your CDO Connector VM.

    • Passwords for the root and CDO users that you create during the installation process.

    • The IP address of the DNS server your organization uses.

    • The gateway IP address of the network the SDC address is on.

    • The FQDN or IP address of your time server.

  • The CDO Connector virtual machine is configured to install security patches on a regular basis and in order to do this, opening port 80 outbound is required.

Procedure

Step 1

Log on to the CDO tenant you are creating the CDO Connector for.

Step 2

In the left pane, click Tools & Services > Secure Connectors.

Step 3

Click the icon and then click Secure Event Connector.

Step 4

In Step 1, click Download the CDO Connector VM image. This is a special image that you install the SEC on. Always download the CDO Connector VM to ensure that you are using the latest image.

Step 5

Extract all the files from the .zip file. They will look similar to these:

  • CDO-SDC-VM-ddd50fa.ovf

  • CDO-SDC-VM-ddd50fa.mf

  • CDO-SDC-VM-ddd50fa-disk1.vmdk

Step 6

Log on to your VMware server as an administrator using the vSphere Web Client.

Note

 

Do not use the VM vSphere desktop client.

Step 7

Deploy the on-premises CDO Connector virtual machine from the OVF template by following the prompts. (You will need the .ovf, .mf, and .vdk files to deploy the template.)

Step 8

When the setup is complete, power on the VM.

Step 9

Open the console for your new CDO Connector VM.

Step 10

Login as the CDO user. The default password is adm123.

Step 11

At the prompt type sudo sdc-onboard setup

[cdo@localhost ~]$ sudo sdc-onboard setup

Step 12

When prompted, enter the default password for the CDO user: adm123.

Step 13

Follow the prompts to create a new password for the root user.

Step 14

Follow the prompts to create a new password for the CDO user.

Step 15

Follow the prompts to enter your CDO domain information.

Step 16

Enter the static IP address you want to use for the CDO Connector VM.

Step 17

Enter the gateway IP address for the network on which the CDO Connector VM is installed.

Step 18

Enter the NTP server address or FQDN for the CDO Connector.

Step 19

When prompted, enter the information for the Docker bridge or leave it blank if it is not applicable and press <Enter>.

Step 20

Confirm your entries.

Step 21

When prompted "Would you like to setup the SDC now?" enter n.

Step 22

Create an SSH connection to the CDO Connector by logging in as the CDO user.

Step 23

At the prompt type sudo sdc-onboard bootstrap

[cdo@localhost ~]$ sudo sdc-onboard bootstrap

Step 24

When prompted, enter the CDO user's password.

Step 25

When prompted, return to CDO and copy the CDO bootstrap data, then paste it into your SSH session. To copy the CDO bootstrap data:

  1. Log into CDO.

  2. In the left pane, click Tools & Services > Secure Connectors.

  3. Select the Secure Event Connector which you started to onboard. The status should show, "Onboarding."

  4. In the Actions pane, click Deploy an On-Premises Secure Event Connector.

  5. Copy the CDO Bootstrap Data in step 1 of the dialog box.

Step 26

When prompted, Would you like to update these settings? enter n.

Step 27

Return to the Deploy an On-Premises Secure Event Connector dialog in CDO and click OK. On the Secure Connectors page, you see your Secure Event Connector is in the yellow Onboarding state.

What to do next

Continue to Install the Secure Event Connector on the CDO Connector VM.

Install the Secure Event Connector on the CDO Connector VM

Before you begin

You should have installed CDO Connector VM as described inInstall a CDO Connector, to Support a Secure Event Connector, Using a CDO VM Image .

Procedure

Step 1

Log in to CDO.

Step 2

In the left pane, choose Tools & Services > Secure Connectors.

Step 3

Select the CDO Connector that you onboarded above. In the Secure Connectors table, it will be called a Secure Event Connector and it should still be in the "Onboading" status.

Step 4

Click Deploy an On-Premises Secure Event Connector in the Actions pane on the right.

Step 5

In step 2 of the wizard, click the link to Copy SEC bootstrap data.

Step 6

Create an SSH connection to the CDO Connector and log in as the CDO user.

Step 7

Once logged in, switch to the sdc user. When prompted for a password, enter the password for the "CDO" user. Here is an example of those commands: 

[cdo@sdc-vm ~]$ sudo su sdc
 [sudo] password for cdo: <type password for cdo user> 
[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$

Step 8

At the prompt, run the sec.sh setup script:

[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$ /usr/local/cdo/toolkit/sec.sh setup

Step 9

At the end of the prompt, paste the bootstrap data you copied in step 4 and press Enter. 

Please copy the bootstrap data from Setup Secure Event Connector page of CDO: KJHYFuYTFuIGhiJKlKnJHvHfgxTewrtwE
 RtyFUiyIOHKNkJbKhvhgyRStwterTyufGUihoJpojP9UOoiUY8VHHGFXREWRtygfhVjhkOuihIuyftyXtfcghvjbkhB=

After the SEC is onboarded, the sec.sh runs a script to check on the health of the SEC. If all the health checks are "green," the health check sends a sample event to the Event Log. The sample event shows up in the Event Log as a policy named "sec-health-check."

If you receive a message that the registration failed or that the SEC onboarding failed, go to Troubleshooting SEC Onboarding Failures.

If you receive the success message return to CDO and click Done on the Deploy an ON-Premise Secure Event Connector dialog box.

What to do next

Return to Implementing Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) for ASA Devices .

Deploy Secure Event Connector on Ubuntu Virtual Machine

Before you begin

You should have installed Secure Device Connector on your Ubuntu VM as described in Deploy Secure Device Connector and Secure Event Connector on Ubuntu Virtual Machine.

Procedure

Step 1

Log on to CDO.

Step 2

From the left pane, Tools & Services > Secure Connectors.

Step 3

Click the icon and then click Secure Event Connector.

Step 4

Copy the SEC bootstrap data in step 2 on the window to a notepad.

Step 5

Execute the following commands:

[sdc@vm]:~$sudo su sdc
sdc@vm:/home/user$ cd /usr/local/cdo/toolkit

When prompted, enter the SEC bootstrap data that you have copied..

sdc@vm:~/toolkit$ ./sec.sh setup
Please input the bootstrap data from Setup Secure Event Connector page of CDO: 
Successfully on-boarded SEC
It may take a few minutes for the Secure Event Connector to become "Active" in CDO.

Install an SEC Using Your VM Image

The Secure Event Connector (SEC) forwards events from ASA and FTD to the Cisco cloud so that you can view them in the Event Logging page and investigate them with Secure Cloud Analytics, depending on your licensing.

You can install more than one Secure Event Connector (SEC) on your tenant and direct events from your ASAs and FDM-managed devices to any of the SECs you install. Having multiple SECs allows you to have SECs installed in different regions and distribute the work of sending events to the Cisco cloud.

Installing multiple SECs using your own VM image is a three part process. You must perform each of these steps:

  1. Install a CDO Connector to Support an SEC Using Your VM Image

  2. Additional Configuration for SDCs and CDO Connectors Installed on a VM You Created

  3. Install the Secure Event Connector


Note

Using a CDO VM image for the CDO Connector is the easiest, most accurate, and preferred method of installing a CDO connector. If you want to use that method, see Installing an SEC Using a CDO Image.

What to do next:

Continue to Install a CDO Connector to Support an SEC Using Your VM Image

Install a CDO Connector to Support an SEC Using Your VM Image

The CDO Connector VM is a virtual machine on which you install an SEC. The purpose of the CDO Connector is solely to support an SEC for Cisco Security Analytics and Logging (SaaS) customers.

This is the first of three steps you need to complete in order install and configure your Secure Event Connector (SEC). After this procedure, you need to complete the following procedures:

Before you begin

  • Purchase the Cisco Security and Analytics Logging, Logging and Troubleshootinglicense, you may also purchase the Logging Analytics and Detection and Total Network Analytics and Monitoring licenses to apply Secure Cloud Analytics to the events.

    If you would rather, you can request a trial version of Security Analytics and Logging by logging in to CDO, and on the main navigation bar, choose Analytics > Event Logging and click Request Trial.

  • CDO requires strict certificate checking and does not support a Web/Content Proxy between the CDO Connector and the Internet.

  • The CDO Connector must have full outbound access to the Internet on TCP port 443.

  • Review Connect to Cisco Defense Orchestrator using Secure Device Connectorto ensure proper network access for the CDO Connector.

  • VMware ESXi host installed with vCenter web client or ESXi web client.


    Note
    We do not support installation using the vSphere desktop client.

  • ESXi 5.1 hypervisor.

  • Cent OS 7 guest operating system.

  • System requirements for a VM to host only a CDO Connector and an SEC:

    • CPU: Assign 4 CPUs to accommodate the SEC.

    • Memory: Assign 8 GB of memory for the SEC.

    • Disk Space: 64 GB

  • Users performing this procedure should be comfortable working in a Linux environment and using the vi visual editor for editing files.

  • If you are installing your CDO Connector on a CentOS virtual machine, we recommend you install Yum security patches on a regular basis. Depending on your Yum configuration, to acquire Yum updates, you may need to open outbound access on port 80 as well as 443. You will also need to configure yum-cron or crontab to schedule the updates. Work with your security-operations team to determine if any security policies need to change to allow you to get the Yum updates.

  • Gather this information before you begin the installation:

    • Static IP address you want to use for your CDO Connector.

    • Passwords for the root and CDO users that you create during the installation process.

    • The IP address of the DNS server your organization uses.

    • The gateway IP address of the network the CDO Connector address is on.

    • The FQDN or IP address of your time server.

  • The CDO Connector virtual machine is configured to install security patches on a regular basis and in order to do this, opening port 80 outbound is required.

  • Before you get started: Do not copy and paste the commands in this procedure into your terminal window, type them instead. Some commands include an "n-dash" and in the cut and paste process, these commands can be applied as an "m-dash" and that may cause the command to fail.

Procedure

Step 1

Log on to CDO.

Step 2

From the left pane, Tools & Services > Secure Connectors.

Step 3

Click the icon and then click Secure Event Connector.

Step 4

Using the link provided, copy the SEC Bootstrap Data in step 2 of the "Deploy an On-Premises Secure Event Connector" window.

Step 5

Install a CentOS 7 virtual machine (http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/7/isos/x86_64/CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1804.iso) with at least the memory, CPU, and disk space mentioned in this procedure's perquisites.

Step 6

Once installed, configure basic networking such as specifying the IP address for the CDO Connector, the subnet mask, and gateway.

Step 7

Configure a DNS (Domain Name Server) server.

Step 8

Configure a NTP (Network Time Protocol) server.

Step 9

Install an SSH server on CentOS for easy interaction with CDO Connector's CLI.

Step 10

Run a Yum update and then install the packages: open-vm-tools, nettools, and bind-utils

[root@sdc-vm ~]# yum update -y 
[root@sdc-vm ~]# yum install -y open-vm-tools net-tools bind-utils

Step 11

Install the AWS CLI package (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/awscli-install-linux.html)

Note

 

Do not use the --user flag.

Step 12

Install the Docker CE packages (https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/centos/#install-docker-ce)

Note

 

Use the "Install using the repository" method.

Step 13

Start the Docker service and enable it to start on boot:

[root@sdc-vm ~]# systemctl start docker
 [root@sdc-vm ~]# systemctl enable docker 
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multiuser.target.wants/docker.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service.

Step 14

Create two users: CDO and sdc. The CDO user will be the one you log-into to run administrative functions (so you don't need to use the root user directly), and the sdc user will be the user to run the CDO Connector docker container. 

[root@sdc-vm ~]# useraddCDO
 [root@sdc-vm ~]# useradd sdc –d /usr/local/CDO

Step 15

Configure the sdc user to use crontab:

[root@sdc-vm ~]# touch /etc/cron.allow
[root@sdc-vm ~]# echo "sdc" >> /etc/cron.allow

Step 16

Set a password for the CDO user. 

[root@sdc-vm ~]# passwd CDO 
Changing password for user CDO. 
New password: <type password>  
Retype new password: <type password> 
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

Step 17

Add the CDO user to the "wheel" group to give it administrative (sudo) privileges. 

[root@sdc-vm ~]# usermod -aG wheelCDO
 [root@sdc-vm ~]#

Step 18

When Docker is installed, there is a user group created. Depending on the version of CentOS/Docker, this may be called either "docker" or "dockerroot". Check the /etc/group file to see which group was created, and then add the sdc user to this group. 


 [root@sdc-vm ~]# grep docker /etc/group 
docker:x:993:
[root@sdc-vm ~]# 
[root@sdc-vm ~]# usermod -aG docker sdc 
[root@sdc-vm ~]#

Step 19

If the /etc/docker/daemon.json file does not exist, create it, and populate with the contents below. Once created, restart the docker daemon.

Note

 

Make sure that the group name entered in the "group" key matches the group you found in the /etc/group file. 

 [root@sdc-vm ~]# cat /etc/docker/daemon.json 
{
 "live-restore": true, 
 "group": "docker" 
} 
[root@sdc-vm ~]# systemctl restart docker 
[root@sdc-vm ~]#

Step 20

If you are currently using a vSphere console session, switch over to SSH and log in as the CDO user. Once logged in, change to the sdc user. When prompted for a password, enter the password for the CDO user. 

[CDO@sdc-vm ~]$ sudo su sdc 
[sudo] password for CDO: <type password for CDO user > 
[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$

Step 21

Change directories to /usr/local/CDO.

Step 22

Create a new file called bootstrapdata and paste the bootstrap data from Step 1 of the deployment wizrd into this file. Save the file. You can use vi or nano to create the file.

Step 23

The bootstrap data comes encoded in base64. Decode it and export it to a file called extractedbootstrapdata

 [sdc@sdc-vm ~]$ base64 -d /usr/local/CDO/bootstrapdata > /usr/local/CDO/extractedbootstrapdata 
[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$

Run the cat command to view the decoded data. The command and decoded data should look similar to this: 

[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$ cat /usr/local/CDO/extractedbootstrapdata 
CDO_TOKEN="<token string>" 
CDO_DOMAIN="www.defenseorchestrator.com" 
CDO_TENANT="<tenant-name>" 
<CDO_URL>/sdc/bootstrap/CDO_acm="https://www.defenseorchestrator.com/sdc/bootstrap/tenant-name/<tenant-name-SDC>" 
ONLY_EVENTING="true"

Step 24

Run the following command to export the sections of the decoded bootstrap data to environment variables. 


[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$ sed -e 's/^/export /g' extractedbootstrapdata > secenv && source secenv 
[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$

Step 25

Download the bootstrap bundle from CDO. 

 [sdc@sdc-vm ~]$ curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $CDO_TOKEN" "$CDO_BOOTSTRAP_URL" -o $CDO_TENANT.tar.gz 
100 10314 100 10314 0 0 10656 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 10654 
[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$ ls -l /usr/local/CDO/*SDC 
-rw-rw-r--. 1 sdc sdc 10314 Jul 23 13:48 /usr/local/CDO/CDO_<tenant_name>

Step 26

Extract the CDO Connector tarball, and run the bootstrap_sec_only.sh file to install the CDO Connector package. 

 [sdc@sdc-vm ~]$ tar xzvf /usr/local/CDO/tenant-name-SDC 
<snipped – extracted files> 
[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$ 
[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$ /usr/local/CDO/bootstrap/bootstrap_sec_only.sh 
[2018-07-23 13:54:02] environment properly configured 
download: s3://onprem-sdc/toolkit/prod/toolkit.tar to toolkit/toolkit.tar 
toolkit.sh 
common.sh 
es_toolkit.sh 
sec.sh 
healthcheck.sh 
troubleshoot.sh 
no crontab for sdc 
-bash-4.2$ crontab -l 
*/5 * * * * /usr/local/CDO/toolkit/es_toolkit.sh upgradeEventing 2>&1 >> /usr/local/CDO/toolkit/toolkit.log 
0 2 * * * sleep 30 && /usr/local/CDO/toolkit/es_toolkit.sh es_maintenance 2>&1 >> /usr/local/CDO/toolkit/toolkit.log 
You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/sdc
What to do next
Continue to Additional Configuration for SDCs and CDO Connectors Installed on a VM You Created .

Additional Configuration for SDCs and CDO Connectors Installed on a VM You Created

If you installed your CDO Connector on your own CentOS 7 virtual machine, perform one of the following additional configuration procedures to allow events to reach the SEC:

Before you begin:

This is the second of three steps you need to complete in order to install and configure your SEC. If you have not already, complete Install a CDO Connector to Support an SEC Using Your VM Image before making these configuration changes.

After you complete one of the additional configuration changes described here, complete Install the Secure Event Connector

Disable the firewalld service on the CentOS 7 VM

  1. Log into the CLI of the SDC VM as the "CDO" user.

  2. Stop the firewalld service, and then ensure that it will remain disabled upon subsequent reboots of the VM. If you are prompted, enter the password for the CDO user: 

    [CDO@SDC-VM ~]$ sudo systemctl stop firewalld
CDO@SDC-VM ~]$ sudo systemctl disable firewalld

  3. Restart the Docker service to re-insert Docker-specific entries into the local firewall:

    [CDO@SDC-VM ~]$ sudo systemctl restart docker

  4. Continue to Install the Secure Event Connector.

Allow the firewalld service to run and add firewall rules to allow event traffic to reach the SEC

  1. Log into the CLI of the SDC VM as the "CDO" user.

  2. Add local firewall rules to allow incoming traffic to the SEC from the TCP, UDP, or NSEL ports you configured. See Finding Your Device's TCP, UDP, and NSEL Port Used for Cisco Security Analytics and Logging for the ports used by your SEC. If prompted, enter the password for the CDO user. Here is an example of the commands. You may need to specify different port values. 

    [CDO@SDC-VM ~]$ sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=10125/tcp 
CDO@SDC-VM ~]$ sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=10025/udp
[CDO@SDC-VM ~]$ sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=10425/udp

  3. Restart the firewalld service to make the new local firewall rules both active and persistent:

    [CDO@SDC-VM ~]$ sudo systemctl restart firewalld

  4. Continue to Install the Secure Event Connector.

Install the Secure Event Connector on your CDO Connector Virtual Machine

Before you begin

This is the third of three steps you need to complete in order to install and configure your Secure Event Connector (SEC). If you have not already, complete the following tasks before continuing with this procedure:

Procedure

Step 1

Log in to CDO.

Step 2

From the left pane, Tools & Services > Secure Connectors.

Step 3

Select the CDO Connector that you installed using the procedure in the prerequisites above. In the Secure Connectors table, it will be displayed as Secure Event Connector.

Step 4

Click Deploy an On-Premises Secure Event Connector in the Actions pane on the right.

Step 5

In step 2 of the wizard, click the link to Copy SEC Bootstrap Data.

Step 6

Connect to the Secure Connector using SSH and log in as the CDO user.

Step 7

Once logged in, switch to the sdc user. When prompted for a password, enter the password for the "CDO" user. Here is an example of those commands: 

[cdo@sdc-vm ~]$ sudo su sdc
[sudo] password for cdo: <type password for cdo user>
[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$

Step 8

At the prompt, run the sec.sh setup script:

[sdc@sdc-vm ~]$ /usr/local/cdo/toolkit/sec.sh setup

Step 9

At the end of the prompt, paste the bootstrap data you copied in step 4 and press Enter. 

Please copy the bootstrap data from Setup Secure Event Connector page of CDO:
 KJHYFuYTFuIGhiJKlKnJHvHfgxTewrtwE RtyFUiyIOHKNkJbKhvhgyRStwterTyufGUihoJpojP9UOoiUY8VHHGFXREWRtygfhVjhkOuihIuyftyXtfcghvjbkhB=

After the SEC is onboarded, the sec.sh runs a script to check on the health of the SEC. If all the health checks are "green," the health check sends a sample event to the Event Log. The sample event shows up in the Event Log as a policy named "sec-health-check."

If you receive a message that the registration failed or that the SEC onboarding failed, go to Troubleshooting Secure Event Connector Onboarding Failures.

If you receive the success message, click Done in the Deploy an ON-Premise Secure Event Connector dialog box.You have finished installing an SEC on a your VM image.

What to do next

Return to this procedure to continue your implementation of SAL SaaS: Implementing Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) for ASA Devices .

Install a Secure Event Connector on an AWS VPC Using a Terraform Module

Before you begin

  • To perform this task, you must enable SAL on your CDO tenant. This section presumes that you have a SAL license. If you do not have one, purchase the Cisco Security and Analytics Logging, Logging and Troubleshooting license.

  • Ensure you have a new SEC installed. To create a new SEC, see Install a Secure Event Connector on an SDC Virtual Machine.

  • When installing the SEC, make sure you take a note of the CDO bootstrap data and SEC bootstrap data.

Procedure

Step 1

Go to Secure Event Connector Terraform Module on the Terraform Registry and follow the instructions to add the SEC Terraform module to your Terraform code.

Step 2

Apply the Terraform code.

Step 3

Ensure that you print the instance_id and sec_fqdn outputs, because you will need them later in the procedure.

Note

 

To troubleshoot your SEC, you must connect to your SEC instance using the AWS Systems Manager Session Manager (SSM). See the AWS Systems Manager Session Manager documentation to know more about connecting to an instance using SSM.

Ports to connect to the SDC instance using SSH are not exposed for secuirty reasons.

Step 4

To enable sending of logs from your ASA to the SEC, obtain the certificate chain of the SEC you created and remove the leaf certificate by running the following command with the output from Step 3: 

rm -f /tmp/cert_chain.pem && openssl s_client -showcerts -verify 5 -connect <FQDN>:10125 < /dev/null | awk '/BEGIN CERTIFICATE/,/END CERTIFICATE/{ if(/BEGIN CERTIFICATE/){a++}; out="/tmp/cert_chain.pem"; if(a > 1) print >>out}'

Step 5

Copy the contents of /tmp/cert_chain.pem to your clipboard.

Step 6

Take a note of the IP address of the SEC using the following command:

nslookup <FQDN>

Step 7

Log in to CDO and start adding a new trustpoint object. See Adding a Trusted CA Certificate Object for more information. Ensure you uncheck the Enable CA flag in basic constraints extension checkbox in Other Options before clicking Add.

Step 8

Click Add, copy the CLI commands generated by CDO in the Install Certificate page, and click Cancel.

Step 9

Below enrollment terminal, add no ca-check in a text clipboard.

Step 10

SSH into your ASA device or use the ASA CLI option in CDO and execute the following commands: 

DataCenterFW-1> en
Password: *****************
DataCenterFW-1# conf t
DataCenterFW-1(config)# <paste your modified ASA CLIs here and press Enter>
DataCenterFW-1(config)# wr mem
Building configuration...
Cryptochecksum: 6634f35f 4c5137f1 ab0c5cdc 9784bdb6

What to do next

You can check if your SEC is receiving packets using AWS SSM:
You should now see logs similar to this:
time="2023-05-10T17:13:46.135018214Z" level=info msg="[ip-10-100-5-19.ec2.internal][util.go:67 plugin.createTickers:func1] Events - Processed - 6/s, Dropped - 0/s, Queue size - 0"

Deprovisioning Cisco Security Analytics and Logging (SaaS)

If you allow your Cisco Security Analytics and Logging (SaaS) paid license to lapse, you have a grace period of 90 days. If you renew your paid license during this grace period, there is no interruption in your service.

Otherwise, if you allow the 90-day grace period to elapse, the system purges all of your customer data. You can no longer view ASA or FTD events from the Event Logging page, nor have dynamic entity modeling behavioral analytics applied to your ASA or FTD events and network flow data.

Remove the Secure Event Connector

Warning: This procedure deletes the Secure Event Connector from the Secure Device Connector. Doing so will prevent you from using Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS). It is not reversible. If you have any questions or concerns, contact CDO support before taking this action.

Removing the Secure Event Connector from your Secure Device Connector is a two-step process:

  1. Remove SEC from CDO.

  2. Remove SEC files from the SDC.

What to do next: Continue to Remove SEC from CDO

Remove an SEC from CDO

Before you begin

See Remove the Secure Event Connector.

Procedure

Step 1

Log in to CDO.

Step 2

From the left pane, choose Tools & Services > Secure Connectors.

Step 3

Select the row with the device type, Secure Event Connector.

Warning

 

Be careful NOT to select your Secure Device Connector.

Step 4

In the Actions pane, click Remove.

Step 5

Click OK to confirm.

What to do next

Continue to Remove SEC files from the SDC.

Remove SEC files from the SDC

This is the second part of a two part procedure to remove the Secure Event Connector from your SDC. See Remove the Secure Event Connector before you begin.

Procedure

Step 1

Open your virtual machine hypervisor and start a console session for your SDC.

Step 2

Switch to the SDC user.

 [cdo@tenant toolkit]$sudo su sdc

Step 3

At the prompt type one of these commands:

  • If you are managing only your own tenant:

    [sdc@tenant toolkit]$ /usr/local/cdo/toolkit/sec.sh remove

  • If you manage more than one tenant, add CDO_ to the beginning of the tenant name. For example: 

     [sdc@tenant toolkit]$ /usr/local/cdo/toolkit/sec.sh remove CDO_[tenant_name]

Step 4

Confirm your intention to remove the SEC files.

Provision a Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics Portal

Required License: Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

If you purchase a Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license, after you deploy and configure the Secure Event Connector (SEC), you must associate a Secure Cloud Analytics portal with your CDO portal to view Secure Cloud Analytics alerts. When you purchase the license, if you have an existing Secure Cloud Analytics portal, you can provide the Secure Cloud Analytics portal name and immediately link it to your CDO portal.

Otherwise, you can request a new Secure Cloud Analytics portal from the CDO UI. The first time you access Secure Cloud Analytics alerts, the system takes you to a page to request the Secure Cloud Analytics portal. The user that requests this portal is granted administrator permission in the portal.

Procedure

Step 1

In the left pane, click Analytics > Secure Cloud Analytics to open the Secure Cloud Analytics UI in a new window.

Step 2

Click Start Free Trial to provision a Secure Cloud Analytics portal and associate it with your CDO portal.

Note

 

After you request the portal, the provisioning may take up to several hours.

Ensure that your portal is provisioned before moving on to the next step.

  1. In the left pane, click Analytics > Secure Cloud Analytics to open the Secure Cloud Analytis UI in a new window.

  2. You have the following options:

    • If you requested a Secure Cloud Analytics portal, and the system states it is still provisioning the portal, wait and try to access the alerts later.

    • If the Secure Cloud Analytics portal is provisioned, enter your Username and Password, then click Sign in.


Note

The administrator user can invite other users to create accounts within the Secure Cloud Analytis portal. See Viewing Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics Alerts from CDO for more information.

What to do next

Review Sensor Health and CDO Integration Status in Secure Cloud Analytics

Sensor Status

Required License: Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

In the Secure Cloud Analytis web UI, you can view your CDO integration status and your configured sensors from the Sensor List page. The CDO integration is the read-only connection-events sensor. Stelathwatch Cloud provides an overall health of your sensors in the main menu:

  • green cloud icon () - connectivity established with all sensors, and CDO if configured

  • yellow cloud icon () - connectivity established with some sensors, or CDO if configured, and one or more sensors is not configured properly

  • red cloud icon () - connectivity lost with all configured sensors, and CDO if configured

Per sensor or CDO integration, a green icon signifies connectivity established, and a red icon signifies connectivity lost.

Procedure

Step 1

1. In the Secure Cloud Analytis portal UI, select Settings () > Sensors.

Step 2

Select Sensor List.

Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics Sensor Deployment for Total Network Analytics and Reporting

Secure Cloud Analytics Sensor Overview and Deployment

Required License: Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

If you obtain a Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license, after you provision a Secure Cloud Analytics portal, you can:

  • Deploy and configure a Secure Cloud Analytics sensor within your on-premises network to pass network flow data to the cloud for analysis.

  • Configure your cloud-based deployment to pass network flow log data to Secure Cloud Analytics for analysis.

Firewalls at your network perimeter gather information about traffic between your internal network and external networks, while Secure Cloud Analytics sensors gather information about traffic within your internal network.


Note

FDM-managedSecure Firewall Threat Defense devices may be configured to pass NetFlow data. When you deploy a sensor, do not configure it to pass NetFlow data from any of your FDM-managedSecure Firewall Threat Defense devices which you also configured to pass event information to CDO.

See the Secure Cloud Analytics Sensor Installation Guide for sensor deployment instructions and recommendations.

See the Secure Cloud Analytics Public Cloud Monitoring Guides for cloud-based deployment configuration instructions and recommendations.


Note

You can also review instructions in the Secure Cloud Analytics portal UI to configure sensors and your cloud-based deployment.

See the Secure Cloud Analytics Free Trial Guide for more information about Secure Cloud Analytics.

Next Steps

Viewing Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics Alerts from CDO

Required License: Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

While you can review your firewall events on the Events logging page, you cannot review Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics alerts from the CDO portal UI. You can cross-launch from CDO to the Secure Cloud Analytics portal using the Security Analytics menu option, and view alerts generated from firewall event data (and from network flow data if you enabled Total Network Analytics and Monitoring). The Security Analytics menu option displays a badge with the number of Secure Cloud Analytics alerts in an open workflow status, if 1 or more are open.

If you use a Security Analytics and Logging license to generate Secure Cloud Analytics alerts, and you provisioned a new Secure Cloud Analytics portal, log into CDO, then cross-launch to Secure Cloud Analytics using Cisco Security Cloud Sign On. You can also directly access your Secure Cloud Analytics portal through its URL.

See Cisco Security Cloud Sign On for more information.

Inviting Users to Join Your Secure Cloud Analytics Portal

The initial user to request the Secure Cloud Analytics portal provision has administrator privileges in the Secure Cloud Analytics portal. That user can invite other users by email to join the portal. If these users do not have Cisco Security Cloud Sign On credentials, they can create them using the link in the invite email. Users can then use Cisco Security Cloud Sign On credentials to log in during the cross-launch from CDO to Secure Cloud Analytics.

To invite other users to your Secure Cloud Analytics portal by email:

Procedure

Step 1

Log into your Secure Cloud Analytics portal as an administrator.

Step 2

Select Settings > Account Management > User Management.

Step 3

Enter an Email address.

Step 4

Click Invite.

Cross-Launching from CDO to Secure Cloud Analytics

To view security alerts from CDO:

Procedure

Step 1

Log into the CDO portal.

Step 2

In the left pane, choose Analytics > Secure Cloud Analytics.

Step 3

In the Secure Cloud Analytics interface, select Monitor > Alerts.

Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics and Dynamic Entity Modeling

Required License: Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

Secure Cloud Analytics is a software as a service (SaaS) solution that monitors your on-premises and cloud-based network deployments. By gathering information about your network traffic from sources including firewall events and network flow data, it creates observations about the traffic and automatically identifies roles for network entities based on their traffic patterns. Using this information combined with other sources of threat intelligence, such as Talos, Secure Cloud Analytics generates alerts, which constitute a warning that there is behavior that may be malicious in nature. Along with the alerts, Secure Cloud Analytics provides network and host visibility, and contextual information it has gathered to provide you with a better basis to research the alert and locate sources of malicious behavior.

Dynamic Entity Modeling

Dynamic entity modeling tracks the state of your network by performing a behavioral analysis on firewall events and network flow data. In the context of Secure Cloud Analytics, an entity is something that can be tracked over time, such as a host or endpoint on your network. Dynamic entity modeling gathers information about entities based on the traffic they transmit and activities they take on your network. Secure Cloud Analytics, integrated with a Logging Analytics and Detection license, can draw from firewall events and other traffic information in order to determine the types of traffic the entity usually transmits. If you purchase a Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license, Secure Cloud Analytics can also include NetFlow and other traffic information in modeling entity traffic. Secure Cloud Analytics updates these models over time, as the entities continue to send traffic, and potentially send different traffic, to keep an up-to-date model of each entity. From this information, Secure Cloud Analytics identifies:

  • Roles for the entity, which are a descriptor of what the entity usually does. For example, if an entity sends traffic that is generally associated with email servers, Secure Cloud Analytics assigns the entity an Email Server role. The role/entity relationship can be many-to-one, as entities may perform multiple roles.

  • Observations for the entity, which are facts about the entity's behavior on the network, such as a heartbeat connection with an external IP address, or a remote access session established with another entity. If you integrate with CDO, these facts can be obtained from firewall events. If you also purchase a Total Network Analytics and Monitoring, license, the system can also obtain facts from NetFlow, and generate observations from both firewall events and NetFlow. Observations on their own do not carry meaning beyond the fact of what they represent. A typical customer may have many thousands of observations and a few alerts.

Alerts and Analysis

Based on the combination of roles, observations, and other threat intelligence, Secure Cloud Analytics generates alerts, which are actionable items that represent possible malicious behavior as identified by the system. Note that one alert may represent multiple observations. If a firewall logs multiple connection events related to the same connection and entities, this may result in only one alert.

For example, a New Internal Device observation on its own does not constitute possible malicious behavior. However, over time, if the entity transmits traffic consistent with a Domain Controller, then the system assigns a Domain Controller role to the entity. If the entity subsequently establishes a connection to an external server that it has not established a connection with previously, using unusual ports, and transfers large amounts of data, the system would log a New Large Connection (External) observation and an Exceptional Domain Controller observation. If that external server is identified as on a Talos watchlist, then the combination of all this information would lead Secure Cloud Analytics to generate an alert for this entity's behavior, prompting you to take further action to research, and remediate malicious behavior.

When you open an alert in the Secure Cloud Analytics web portal UI, you can view the supporting observations that led the system to generate the alert. From these observations, you can also view additional context about the entities involved, including the traffic that they transmitted, and external threat intelligence if it is available. You can also see other observations and alerts that entities were involved with, and determine if this behavior is tied to other potentially malicious behavior.

Note that when you view and close alerts in Secure Cloud Analytics, you cannot allow or block traffic from the Secure Cloud Analytics UI. You must update your firewall access control rules to allow or block traffic, if you deployed your devices in active mode, or your firewall access control rules if your firewalls are deployed in passive mode.

Working with Alerts Based on Firewall Events

Required License: Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

Alerts Workflow

An alert's workflow is based around its status. When the system generates an alert, the default status is Open, and no user is assigned. When you view the Alerts summary, all open alerts are displayed by default, as these are of immediate concern.

Note: If you have a Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license, your alerts can be based on observations generated from NetFlow, observations generated from firewall events, or observations from both data sources.

As you review the Alerts summary, you can assign, tag, and update status on alerts as an initial triage. You can use the filters and search functionality to locate specific alerts, or display alerts of different statuses, or associated with different tags or assignees. You can set an alert's status to Snoozed, in which case it does not reappear in the list of open alerts until the snooze period elapses. You can also remove Snoozed status from an alert, to display it as an open alert again. As you review alerts, you can assign them to yourself or another user in the system. Users can search for all alerts assigned to their username.

From the Alerts summary, you can view an alert detail page. This page allows you to review additional context about the supporting observations that resulted in this alert, and additional context about the entities involved in this alert. This information can help you pinpoint the actual issue, in order to further research the issue on your network, and potentially resolve malicious behavior.

As you research within the Secure Cloud Analytics web portal UI, in CDO, and on your network, you can leave comments with the alert that describe your findings. This helps create a record for your research that you can reference in the future.

If you complete your analysis, you can update the status to Closed, and have it no longer appear by default as an open alert. You can also re-open a closed alert in the future if circumstances change.

The following presents general guidelines and suggestions for how to investigate a given alert. Because Secure Cloud Analytics provides additional context when it logs an alert, you can use this context to help guide your investigation.

These steps are meant to be neither comprehensive, nor all-inclusive. They merely offer a general framework with which to start investigating an alert.

In general, you can take the following steps when you review an alert:

  1. Triage open alerts

  2. Snooze alerts for later analysis

  3. Update the alert for further investigation

  4. Review the alert and start your investigation

  5. Examine the entity and users

  6. Remediate issues using Secure Cloud Analytics

  7. Update and close the alert

Triage open alerts

Triage the open alerts, especially if more than one have yet to be investigated:

Ask the following questions:

  • Have you configured this alert type as high priority?

  • Did you set a high sensitivity for the affected subnet?

  • Is this unusual behavior from a new entity on your network?

  • What is the entity's normal role, and how does the behavior in this alert fit that role?

  • Is this an exceptional deviation from normal behavior for this entity?

  • If a user is involved, is this expected behavior from the user, or exceptional?

  • Is protected or sensitive data at risk of being compromised?

  • How severe is the impact to your network if this behavior is allowed to continue?

  • If there is communication with external entities, have these entities established connections with other entities on your network in the past?

If this is a high priority alert, consider quarantining the entity from the internet, or otherwise closing its connections, before continuing your investigation.

Snooze alerts for later analysis

Snooze alerts when they are of lesser priority, as compared to other alerts. For example, if your organization is repurposing an email server as an FTP server, and the system generates an Emergent Profile alert (indicating that an entity's current traffic matches a behavior profile that it did not previously match), you can snooze this alert as it is intended behavior, and revisit it at a later date. A snoozed alert does not show up with the open alerts; you must specifically filter to review these snoozed alerts.

Snooze an alert:

Procedure

Step 1

Click Close Alert.

Step 2

In the Snooze this alert pane, select a snooze period from the drop-down.

Step 3

Click Save.

What to do next

When you are ready to review these alerts, you can unsnooze them. This sets the status to Open, and displays the alert alongside the other Open alerts.

Unsnooze a snoozed alert:

  • From a snoozed alert, click Unsnooze Alert.

Update the alert for further investigation

Open the alert detail:

Procedure

Step 1

Select Monitor > Alerts.

Step 2

Click an alert type name.

What to do next

Based on your initial triage and prioritization, assign the alert and tag it:

  1. Select a user from the Assignee drop-down to assign the alert, so a user can start investigating.

  2. Select one or more Tags from the drop-down to add tags to the alert, to better categorize your alert's for future identification, as well as to try and establish long-term patterns in your alerts.

  3. Enter a Comment on this alert, then click Comment to leave comments as necessary to track your initial findings, and assist the person assigned to the alert. The alert tracks both system comments and user comments.

Review the alert and start your investigation

If you are reviewing an assigned alert, review the alert detail to understand why Secure Cloud Analytics generated an alert. Review the supporting observations to understand what these observations mean for the source entity.

Note that if the alert was generated based on firewall events, the system does not note that your firewall deployment was the source of this alert.

View all of the supporting observations for this source entity to understand its general behavior and patterns, and see if this activity may be part of a longer trend:

SUMMARY STEPS

  1. From the alert detail, click the arrow icon () next to an observation type to view all logged observations of that type.
  2. Click the arrow icon () next to All Observations for Network to view all logged observations for this alert's source entity.

DETAILED STEPS

Step 1

From the alert detail, click the arrow icon () next to an observation type to view all logged observations of that type.

Step 2

Click the arrow icon () next to All Observations for Network to view all logged observations for this alert's source entity.

Download the supporting observations in a comma-separated value file, if you want to perform additional analysis on these observations:

  • From the alert detail, in the Supporting Observations pane, click CSV.

From the observations, determine if the source entity behavior is indicative of malicious behavior. If the source entity established connections with multiple external entities, determine if the external entities are somehow related, such as if they all have similar geolocation information, or their IP addresses are from the same subnet.

View additional context surrounding the source entity from a source entity IP address or hostname, including other alerts and observations it may be involved in, information about the device itself, and what type of session traffic it is transmitting:

  • Select Alerts from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view all alerts related to the entity.

  • Select Observations from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view all observations related to the entity.

  • Select Device from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view information about the device.

  • Select Session Traffic from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view session traffic related to this entity.

  • Select Copy from the IP address or hostname drop-down to copy the IP address or hostname.

Note that the source entity in Secure Cloud Analytics is always internal to your network. Contrast this with the Initiator IP in a firewall event, which indicates the entity that initiated a connection, and may be internal or external to your network.

From the observations, examine information about other external entities. Examine the geolocation information, and determine if any of the geolocation data or Umbrella data identifies a malicious entity. View the traffic generated by these entities. Check whether Talos, AbuseIPDB, or Google have any information on these entities. Find the IP address on multiple days and see what other types of connections the external entity established with entities on your network. If necessary, locate those internal entities and determine if there is any evidence of compromise or unintended behavior.

Review the context for an external entity IP address or hostname with which the source entity established a connection:

  • Select IP Traffic from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view recent traffic information for this entity.

  • Select Session Traffic from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view recent session traffic information for this entity.

  • Select AbuseIPDB from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view information about this entity on AbuseIPDB's website.

  • Select Cisco Umbrella from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view information about this entity on Cisco Umbrella's website.

  • Select Google Search from the IP address or hostname drop-down to search for this IP address on Google.

  • Select Talos Intelligence from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view information about this information on Talos's website.

  • Select Add IP to watchlist from the IP address or hostname drop-down to add this entity to the watchlist.

  • Select Find IP on multiple days from the IP address or hostname drop-down to search for this entity's traffic from the past month.

  • Select Copy from the IP address or hostname drop-down to copy the IP address or hostname.

Note that connected entities in Secure Cloud Analytics are always external to your network. Contrast this with the Responder IP in a firewall event, which indicates the entity that responded to a connection request, and may be internal or external to your network.

Leave comments as to your findings.

  • From the alert detail, enter a Comment on this alert, then click Comment.

Examine the entity and users

After you review the alert in the Secure Cloud Analytics portal UI, you can perform an additional examination on a source entity directly, any users that may have been involved with this alert, and other related entities.

  • Determine where the source entity is on your network, physically or in the cloud, and access it directly. Locate the log files for this entity. If it is a physical entity on your network, access the device to review the log information, and see if there is any information as to what caused this behavior. If it is a virtual entity, or stored in the cloud, access the logs and search for entries related to this entity. Examine the logs for further information on unauthorized logins, unapproved configuration changes, and the like.

  • Examine the entity. Determine if you can identify malware or a vulnerability on the entity itself. See if there has been some malicious change, including if there are physical changes to a device, such as a USB stick that is not approved by your organization.

  • Determine if a user on your network, or from outside your network, was involved. Ask the user what they were doing if possible. If the user is unavailable, determine if they were supposed to have access, and if a situation occurred that prompted this behavior, such as a terminated employee uploading files to an external server before leaving the company.

Leave comments as to your findings:

  • From the alert detail, enter a Comment on this alert, then click Comment.

Remediate issues using Secure Cloud Analytics

If malicious behavior caused the alert, remediate the malicious behavior. For example:

  • If a malicious entity or user attempted to log in from outside your network, update your firewall rules and firewall configuration to prevent the entity or user from accessing your network.

  • If an entity attempted to access an unauthorized or malicious domain, examine the affected entity to determine if malware is the cause. If there are malicious DNS redirects, determine if other entities on your network are affected, or part of a botnet. If this is intended by a user, determine if there is a legitimate reason for this, such as testing firewall settings. Update your firewall rules and firewall configuration to prevent further access to the domain.

  • If an entity is exhibiting behavior that is different from the historical entity model behavior, determine if the behavior change is intended. If it is unintended, examine whether an otherwise authorized user on your network is responsible for the change. Update your firewall rules and firewall configuration to address unintended behavior if it involves connections with entities that are external to your network.

  • If you identify a vulnerability or exploit, update or patch the affected entity to remove the vulnerability, or update your firewall configuration to prevent unauthorized access. Determine if other entities on your network may similarly be affected, and apply the same update or patch to those entities. If the vulnerability or exploit currently does not have a fix, contact the appropriate vendor to let them know.

  • If you identify malware, quarantine the entity and remove the malware. Review the firewall file and malware events to determine if other entities on your network are at risk, and quarantine and update the entities to prevent this malware from spreading. Update your security intelligence with information about this malware, or the entities that caused this malware. Update your firewall access control and file and malware rules to prevent this malware from infecting your network in the future. Alert vendors as necessary.

  • If malicious behavior resulted in data exfiltration, determine the nature of the data sent to an unauthorized source. Follow your organization's protocols for unauthorized data exfiltration. Update your firewall configuration to prevent future data exfiltration attempts by this source.

Update and close the alert

Add additional tags based on your findings:

Procedure

Step 1

In the Secure Cloud Analytics portal UI, select Monitor > Alerts.

Step 2

Select one or more Tags from the drop-down.

Add final comments describing the results of your investigation, and any remediation steps taken:

  • From an alert's detail, enter a Comment on this alert, then click Comment.

Close the alert, and mark it as helpful or not helpful:

  1. From an alert's detail, click Close Alert.

  2. Select Yes if the alert was helpful, or No if the alert was unhelpful. Note that this does not necessarily mean that the alert resulted from malicious behavior, just that the alert was helpful to your organization.

  3. Click Save.

What to do next

Reopen a closed alert

If you discover additional information related to a closed alert, or want to add more comments related to that alert, you can reopen it, changing the status to Open. You can then make changes as necessary to the alert, then close it again when your additional investigation is complete.

Reopen a closed alert:

  • From a closed alert's detail, click Reopen Alert.

Modifying Alert Priorities

Required License: Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

Alert types come with default priorities, which affect how sensitive the system is to generating alerts of this type. Alerts default to low or normal priority, based on Cisco intelligence and other factors. Based on your network environment, you may want to reprioritize alert types, to emphasize certain alerts that you are concerned with. You can configure any alert type to be low, normal, or high priority.

  • Select Monitor > Alerts.

  • Click the settings drop-down icon (), then select Alert Types and Priorities.

  • Click the edit icon () next to an alert type and select low, medium, or high to change the priority.

Viewing Live Events

The Live events page shows the most recent 500 events that match the filter and search criteria you entered. If the Live events page displays the maximum of 500 events, and more events stream in, CDO displays the newest live events, and transfers the oldest live events to the Historical events page, keeping the total number of live events at 500. That transfer takes roughly a minute to perform. If no filtering criteria is added, you will see all the latest Live 500 events generated by rules configured to log events.

The event timestamps are shown in UTC.

Changing the filtering criteria, whether live events are playing or paused, clears the events screen and restarts the collection process.

To see live events in the CDO Events viewer:

Procedure

Step 1

In the left pane, choose Analytics > Event Logging.

Step 2

Click the Live tab.

What to do next

See how to play and pause events by reading .

Play/Pause Live Events

You can "play" or "pause" live events as they stream in. If live events are "playing," CDO displays events that match the filtering criteria specified in the Events viewer in the order they are received. If events are paused, CDO does not update the Live events page until you restart playing live events. When you restart playing events, CDO begins populating events in the Live page from the point at which you restarted playing events. It doesn't back-fill the ones you missed.

To view all the events that CDO received whether you played or paused live event streaming, click the Historical tab.

Auto-pause Live Events

After displaying events for about 5 consecutive minutes, CDO warns you that it is about to pause the stream of live events. At that time, you can click the link to continue streaming live events for another 5 minutes or allow the stream to stop. You can restart the live events stream when you are ready.

Receiving and Reporting Events

There may be a small lag between the Secure Event Connector (SEC) receiving events and CDO posting events in the Live events viewer. You can view the gap on the Live page. The time stamp of the event is the time it was received by SEC.

View Historical Events

The Live events page shows the most recent 500 events that match the filter and search criteria you entered. Events older than the most recent 500 are transferred to the Historical events table. That transfer takes roughly a minute to perform. You can then filter all the events you have stored to find events you're looking for.

To view historical events:

Procedure

Step 1

In the navigation pane, choose Analytics > Event Logging.

Step 2

Click the Historical tab. By default, when you open the Historical events table, the filter is set to display the events collected within the last hour.

The event attributes are largely the same as what is reported by Firepower Device Manager (FDM) or the Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM).

Customize the Events View

Any changes made to the Event Logging page are automatically saved for when you navigate away from this page and come back at a later time.


Note

The Live and Historical events view have the same configuration. When you customize the events view, these changes are applied to both the Live and Historical view.

Show or Hide Columns

You can modify the event view for both live and historical events to only include column headers that apply to the view you want. Click the column filter icon located to the right of the columns, select or deselect the columns you want, and then click Apply.

Figure 1. Show or Hide Columns
Screen capture of Customize Table pane

Columns with asterisks are provided within the event table by default, although you can remove them at any time.

Search and Add Columns

You can search for more columns, which are not part of the default list, and add them to the event view for both live and historical events. Note that adding many columns for customizing the table may reduce performance. Consider using fewer columns for faster data retrieval.

Alternatively, click the + icon next to an event to expand it and view the hidden columns. Note that some of the event fields displayed when you expand an event can have a different name compared to the corresponding column name. To correlate the events fields displayed when you expand an event to the corresponding column name, see Correlate Threat Defense Event Fields and Column Names.

Reorder the Columns

You can reorder the columns of the event table. Click the column filter icon located to the right of the columns to view the list of selected columns. Then, drag and drop the columns into the order you want. The column at the top of the list in the drop-down menu appears as the left-most column in the event table.

Correlate Threat Defense Event Fields and Column Names

On the CDO Event Logging page, you can click on any event to expand its details and view all the associated event fields. Note that the names of some event fields may differ from those of the column headers in the CDO event viewer where the values of these fields are displayed. The table below lists those threat defense event fields that have differing column names and provides a comparison between the threat defense event field and the respective column name.

Table 1. Threat Defense Event Field and the Corresponding CDO Column Name

CDO Column Name

FTD Event Field

Date/Time

Timestamp

Detection Type

ClientAppDetector

Encrypted Visibility Fingerprint

EVE_Fingerprint

Encrypted Visibility Process Name

EVE_Process

Encrypted Visibility Process Confidence Score

EVE_ProcessConfidencePct

Encrypted Visibility Threat Confidence

EVE_ThreatConfidenceIndex

Encrypted Visibility Threat Confidence Score

EVE_ThreatConfidencePct

MITRE

MitreAttackGroups

NAT Source IP

NAT_InitiatorIP

NAT Source Port

NAT_InitiatorPort

Rule Group

SnortRuleGroups

Show and Hide Columns on the Event Logging Page

The Event Logging page displays ASA and FTD syslog events and ASA NetFlow Secure Event Logging (NSEL) events sent to the Cisco cloud from configured ASA and FDM-managed devices.

You can show or hide columns on the Event Logging page by using the Show/Hide widget with the table:

Procedure

Step 1

In the left pane, choose Analytics > Event Logging .

Step 2

Scroll to the far right of the table and click the column filter icon .

Step 3

Check the columns you want to see and uncheck the columns you want to hide.

Other users logging into the tenant will see the same columns you chose to show until columns are shown or hidden again.

This table describes the default column headers:

Column Header

Description

Date/Time

The time the device generated the event. By default, event timestamps are displayed in your Local time zone. To view event timestamps in UTC, see Change the Time Zone for the Event Timestamps

Device Type

ASA (Adaptive Security Appliance)

FTD (Firepower Threat Defense)

Event Type

This composite column can have any of the following:

  • FTD Event Types

    • Connection: Displays connection events from access control rules.

    • File: Displays events reported by file policies in access control rules.

    • Intrusion: Displays events reported by intrusion policy in access control rules.

    • Malware: Displays events reported by malware policies in access control rules.

  • ASA Event Types: These event types represent groups of syslog or NetFlow events. See ASA Event Types for more information about which syslog ID or which NetFlow ID is included in which group.

    • Parsed Events: Parsed syslog events contain more event attributes than other syslog events and CDO is able to return search results based on those attributes more quickly. Parsed events are not a filtering category; however, parsed event IDs are displayed in the Event Types column in italics. Event IDs that are not displayed in italics are not parsed.

    • ASA NetFlow Event IDs: All Netflow (NSEL) events from ASA appear here.

Sensor ID

The Sensor ID is the IP address from which events are sent to the Secure Event Connector. This is typically the Management interface on the Firepower Threat Defense or the ASA.

Initiator IP

This is the IP address of the source of the network traffic. The value of the Initiator address field corresponds to the value of the InitiatorIP field in the event details. You can enter a single address, such as 10.10.10.100, or a network defined in CIDR notation such as 10.10.10.0/24.

Responder IP

This is the destination IP address of the packet. The value of the Destination address field corresponds to the value in the ResponderIP field in the event details. You can enter a single address, such as 10.10.10.100, or a network defined in CIDR notation such as 10.10.10.0/24.

Port

The port or ICMP code used by the session responder. The value of the destination port corresponds to the value of the ResponderPort in the event details.

Protocol

It represents the protocol in the events.

Action

Specifies the security action defined by the rule. The value you enter must be an exact match to what you want to find; however, the case doesn't matter. Enter different values for connection, file, intrusion, malware, syslog, and NetFlow event types:

  • For connection event types, the filter searches for matches in the AC_RuleAction attribute. Those values could be Allow, Block, Trust.

  • For file event types, the filter searches for matches in the FileAction attribute. Those values could be Allow, Block, Trust.

  • For intrusion event types, the filter searches for matches in the InLineResult attribute. Those values could be Allowed, Blocked, Trusted.

  • For malware event types, the filter searches for matches in the FileAction attribute. Those values could be Cloud Lookup Timeout.

  • For syslog and NetFlow events types, the filter searches for matches in the Action attribute.

Policy

The name of the policy that triggered the event. Names will be different for ASA and FDM-managed devices.

Change the Time Zone for the Event Timestamps

Change the time zone display for event timestamps on the CDO Event Logging page.

Procedure

Step 1

From the left pane, choose Analytics > Event Logging.

Step 2

Click the UTC Time or Local Time button on the top right side of the Event Logging page to display the event timestamps in the selected time zone.

By default, event timestamps are displayed in your local time zone.

Customizable Event Filters

If you are a Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) customer, you can create and save custom filters that you use frequently.

The elements of your filter are saved to a filter tab as you configure them. Whenever you return to the Event Logging page, these searches will be available to you. They will not be available to other CDO users of the tenant. They will not be available to you on a different tenant, if you manage more than one tenant.


Note

Be aware that when you are working in a filter tab, if you modify any filter criteria, those changes are saved to your custom filter tab automatically.

Procedure

Step 1

From the main menu, choose Analytics > Event Logging.

Step 2

Clear the Search field of any values.

Step 3

Above the event table, click the blue plus button to add a View tab. Filter views are labeled "View 1", "View 2", "View 3" and so on until you give them a name.

Step 4

Select a view tab.

Step 5

Open the filter bar and select the filters attributes you want in your custom filter. See Searching for and Filtering Events in the Event Logging Page. Remember that only filter attributes are saved in the custom filter.

Step 6

Customize the columns you want to show in the event logging table. See Show and Hide Columns on the Event Logging Page for a discussion of showing and hiding columns.

Step 7

Double-click the filter tab with the "View X" label and rename it.

Step 8

(Optional) Now that you have created a custom filter, you can fine tune the results displayed on the Event Logging page, without changing the custom filter, by adding search criteria to the Search field. See Searching for and Filtering Events in the Event Logging Page.

Event Attributes in Security Analytics and Logging

Event Attribute Descriptions

The event attribute descriptions used by CDO are largely the same as what is reported by Firepower Device Manager (FDM) and Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM).

Some ASA syslog events are "parsed" and others have additional attributes which you can use when filtering the contents of the Event Logging table using attribute:value pairs. See these additional topics for other important attributes of syslog events:

EventGroup and EventGroupDefinition Attributes for Some Syslog Messages

Some syslog events will have the additional attributes "EventGroup" and "EventGroupDefinition". You will be able to filter the events table to find events using these additional attributes by filtering by attribute:value pairs. For example, you could filter for Application Firewall events by entering apfw:415* in the search field of the Event Logging table.

Syslog Message Classes and Associated Message ID Numbers

EventGroup

EventGroupDefinition

Syslog Message ID Numbers (first 3 digits)
aaa/auth User Authentication 109, 113
acl/session Access Lists/User Session 106
apfw Application Firewall 415
bridge Transparent Firewall 110, 220
ca PKI Certification Authority 717
citrix Citrix Client 723
clst Clustering 747
cmgr Card Management 323
config Command Interface 111, 112, 208, 308
csd Secure Desktop 724
cts Cisco TrustSec 776
dap Dynamic Access Policies 734
eap, eapoudp EAP or EAPoUDP for Network Admission Control 333, 334
eigrp EIGRP Routing 336
email E-mail Proxy 719
ipaa/envmon Environment Monitoring 735
ha Failover 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 210, 311, 709
idfw Identity-based Firewall 746
ids Intrusion Detection System 733
ids/ips Intrusion Detection System / Intrusion Protection System 400
ikev2 IKEv2 Toolkit 750, 751, 752
ip IP Stack 209, 215, 313, 317, 408
ipaa IP Address Assignment 735
ips Intrusion Protection System 401, 420
ipv6 IPv6 325
l4tm Block lists, Allow lists, grey lists 338
lic Licensing 444
mdm-proxy MDM Proxy 802
nac Network Admission Control 731, 732
vpn/nap IKE and IPsec / Network Access Point 713
np Network Processor 319
ospf OSPF Routing 318, 409, 503, 613
passwd Password Encryption 742
pp Phone Proxy 337
rip RIP Routing 107, 312
rm Resource Manager 321
sch Smart Call Home 120
session User Session 108, 201, 202, 204, 302, 303, 304, 314, 405, 406, 407, 500, 502, 607, 608, 609, 616, 620, 703, 710
session/natpat User Session/NAT and PAT 305
snmp SNMP 212
ssafe ScanSafe 775
ssl/np ssl SSL Stack/NP SSL 725
svc SSL VPN Client 722
sys System 199, 211, 214, 216, 306, 307, 315, 414, 604, 605, 606, 610, 612, 614, 615, 701, 711, 741
tre Transactional Rule Engine 780
ucime UC-IME 339
tag-switching Service Tag Switching 779
td Threat Detection 733
vm VLAN Mapping 730
vpdn PPTP and L2TP Sessions 213, 403, 603
vpn IKE and IPsec 316, 320, 402, 404, 501, 602, 702, 713, 714, 715
vpnc VPN Client 611
vpnfo VPN Failover 720
vpnlb VPN Load Balancing 718
vxlan VXLAN 778
webfo WebVPN Failover 721
webvpn WebVPN and AnyConnect Client 716
session/natpat User Session / NAT and PAT 305

EventName Attributes for Syslog Events

Some syslog events will have the additional attribute "EventName". You will be able to filter the events table to find events using the EventName attribute by filtering by attribute:value pairs. For example, you could filter events for a "Denied IP packet" by entering EventName:"Denied IP Packet" in the search field of the Event Logging table.

Syslog Event ID and Event Names Tables

AAA Syslog Event IDs and Event Names

EventID

EventName

109001

AAA Begin

109002

AAA Failed

109003

AAA Server Failed

109005

Authentication Success

109006

Authentication Failed

109007

Authorization Success

109008

Authorization Failed

109010

AAA Pending

109011

AAA Session Started

109012

AAA Session Ended

109013

AAA

109014

AAA Failed

109016

AAA ACL not found

109017

AAA Limit Reach

109018

AAA ACL Empty

109019

AAA ACL error

109020

AAA ACL error

109021

AAA error

109022

AAA HTTP limit reached

109023

AAA auth required

109024

Authorization Failed

109025

Authorization Failed

109026

AAA error

109027

AAA Server error

109028

AAA Bypassed

109029

AAA ACL error

109030

AAA ACL error

109031

Authentication Failed

109032

AAA ACL error

109033

Authentication Failed

109034

Authentication Failed

109035

AAA Limit Reach

113001

AAA Session limit reach

113003

AAA overridden

113004

AAA Successful

113005

Authorization Rejected

113006

AAA user locked

113007

AAA User unlocked

113008

AAA successful

113009

AAA retrieved

113010

AAA Challenge received

113011

AAA retrieved

113012

Authentication Successful

113013

AAA error

113014

AAA error

113015

Authentication Rejected

113016

AAA Rejected

113017

AAA Rejected

113018

AAA ACL error

113019

AAA Disconnected

113020

AAA error

113021

AAA Logging Fail

113022

AAA Failed

113023

AAA reactivated

113024

AAA Client certification

113025

AAA Authentication fail

113026

AAA error

113027

AAA error

Botnet Syslog Event IDs and Event Names

EventID

EventName

338001

Botnet Source Block List

338002

Botnet Destination Block List

338003

Botnet Source Block List

338004

Botnet Destination Block List

338101

Botnet Source Allow List

338102

Botnet destination Allow List

338202

Botnet destination Grey

338203

Botnet Source Grey

338204

Botnet Destination Grey

338301

Botnet DNS Intercepted

338302

Botnet DNS

338303

Botnet DNS

338304

Botnet Download successful

338305

Botnet Download failed

338306

Botnet Authentication failed

338307

Botnet Decrypt failed

338308

Botnet Client

338309

Botnet Client

338310

Botnet dyn filter failed

Failover Syslog Event IDs and Event Names

EventID

EventName

101001

Failover Cable OK

101002

Failover Cable BAD

101003

Failover Cable not connected

101004

Failover Cable not connected

101005

Failover Cable reading error

102001

Failover Power failure

103001

No response from failover mate

103002

Failover mate interface OK

103003

Failover mate interface BAD

103004

Failover mate reports failure

103005

Failover mate reports self failure

103006

Failover version incompatible

103007

Failover version difference

104001

Failover role switch

104002

Failover role switch

104003

Failover unit failed

104004

Failover unit OK

106100

Permit/Denied by ACL

210001

Stateful Failover error

210002

Stateful Failover error

210003

Stateful Failover error

210005

Stateful Failover error

210006

Stateful Failover error

210007

Stateful Failover error

210008

Stateful Failover error

210010

Stateful Failover error

210020

Stateful Failover error

210021

Stateful Failover error

210022

Stateful Failover error

311001

Stateful Failover update

311002

Stateful Failover update

311003

Stateful Failover update

311004

Stateful Failover update

418001

Denied Packet to Management

709001

Failover replication error

709002

Failover replication error

709003

Failover replication start

709004

Failover replication complete

709005

Failover receive replication start

709006

Failover receive replication complete

709007

Failover replication failure

710003

Denied access to Device

Firewall Denied Syslog Event IDs and Event Names

EventID

EventName

106001

Denied by Security Policy

106002

Outbound Deny

106006

Denied by Security Policy

106007

Denied Inbound UDP

106008

Denied by Security Policy

106010

Denied by Security Policy

106011

Denied Inbound

106012

Denied due to Bad IP option

106013

Dropped Ping to PAT IP

106014

Denied Inbound ICMP

106015

Denied by Security Policy

106016

Denied IP Spoof

106017

Denied due to Land Attack

106018

Denied outbound ICMP

106020

Denied IP Packet

106021

Denied TCP

106022

Denied Spoof packet

106023

Denied IP Packet

106025

Dropped Packet failed to Detect context

106026

Dropped Packet failed to Detect context

106027

Dropped Packet failed to Detect context

106100

Permit/Denied by ACL

418001

Denied Packet to Management

710003

Denied access to Device

Firewall Traffic Syslog Event IDs and Event Names

EventID

EventName

108001

Inspect SMTP

108002

Inspect SMTP

108003

Inspect ESMTP Dropped

108004

Inspect ESMTP

108005

Inspect ESMTP

108006

Inspect ESMTP Violation

108007

Inspect ESMTP

110002

No Router found

110003

Failed to Find Next hop

209003

Fragment Limit Reach

209004

Fragment invalid Length

209005

Fragment IP discard

302003

H245 Connection Start

302004

H323 Connection start

302009

Restart TCP

302010

Connection USAGE

302012

H225 CALL SIGNAL CONN

302013

Built TCP

302014

Teardown TCP

302015

Built UDP

302016

Teardown UDP

302017

Built GRE

302018

Teardown GRE

302019

H323 Failed

302020

Built ICMP

302021

Teardown ICMP

302022

Built TCP Stub

302023

Teardown TCP Stub

302024

Built UDP Stub

302025

Teardown UDP Stub

302026

Built ICMP Stub

302027

Teardown ICMP Stub

302033

Connection H323

302034

H323 Connection Failed

302035

Built SCTP

302036

Teardown SCTP

303002

FTP file download/upload

303003

Inspect FTP Dropped

303004

Inspect FTP Dropped

303005

Inspect FTP reset

313001

ICMP Denied

313004

ICMP Drop

313005

ICMP Error Msg Drop

313008

ICMP ipv6 Denied

324000

GTP Pkt Drop

324001

GTP Pkt Error

324002

Memory Error

324003

GTP Pkt Drop

324004

GTP Version Not Supported

324005

GTP Tunnel Failed

324006

GTP Tunnel Failed

324007

GTP Tunnel Failed

337001

Phone Proxy SRTP Failed

337002

Phone Proxy SRTP Failed

337003

Phone Proxy SRTP Auth Fail

337004

Phone Proxy SRTP Auth Fail

337005

Phone Proxy SRTP no Media Session

337006

Phone Proxy TFTP Unable to Create File

337007

Phone Proxy TFTP Unable to Find File

337008

Phone Proxy Call Failed

337009

Phone Proxy Unable to Create Phone Entry

400000

IPS IP options-Bad Option List

400001

IPS IP options-Record Packet Route

400002

IPS IP options-Timestamp

400003

IPS IP options-Security

400004

IPS IP options-Loose Source Route

400005

IPS IP options-SATNET ID

400006

IPS IP options-Strict Source Route

400007

IPS IP Fragment Attack

400008

IPS IP Impossible Packet

400009

IPS IP Fragments Overlap

400010

IPS ICMP Echo Reply

400011

IPS ICMP Host Unreachable

400012

IPS ICMP Source Quench

400013

IPS ICMP Redirect

400014

IPS ICMP Echo Request

400015

IPS ICMP Time Exceeded for a Datagram

400017

IPS ICMP Timestamp Request

400018

IPS ICMP Timestamp Reply

400019

IPS ICMP Information Request

400020

IPS ICMP Information Reply

400021

IPS ICMP Address Mask Request

400022

IPS ICMP Address Mask Reply

400023

IPS Fragmented ICMP Traffic

400024

IPS Large ICMP Traffic

400025

IPS Ping of Death Attack

400026

IPS TCP NULL flags

400027

IPS TCP SYN+FIN flags

400028

IPS TCP FIN only flags

400029

IPS FTP Improper Address Specified

400030

IPS FTP Improper Port Specified

400031

IPS UDP Bomb attack

400032

IPS UDP Snork attack

400033

IPS UDP Chargen DoS attack

400034

IPS DNS HINFO Request

400035

IPS DNS Zone Transfer

400036

IPS DNS Zone Transfer from High Port

400037

IPS DNS Request for All Records

400038

IPS RPC Port Registration

400039

IPS RPC Port Unregistration

400040

IPS RPC Dump

400041

IPS Proxied RPC Request

400042

IPS YP server Portmap Request

400043

IPS YP bind Portmap Request

400044

IPS YP password Portmap Request

400045

IPS YP update Portmap Request

400046

IPS YP transfer Portmap Request

400047

IPS Mount Portmap Request

400048

IPS Remote execution Portmap Request

400049

IPS Remote execution Attempt

400050

IPS Statd Buffer Overflow

406001

Inspect FTP Dropped

406002

Inspect FTP Dropped

407001

Host Limit Reach

407002

Embryonic limit Reached

407003

Established limit Reached

415001

Inspect Http Header Field Count

415002

Inspect Http Header Field Length

415003

Inspect Http body Length

415004

Inspect Http content-type

415005

Inspect Http URL length

415006

Inspect Http URL Match

415007

Inspect Http Body Match

415008

Inspect Http Header match

415009

Inspect Http Method match

415010

Inspect transfer encode match

415011

Inspect Http Protocol Violation

415012

Inspect Http Content-type

415013

Inspect Http Malformed

415014

Inspect Http Mime-Type

415015

Inspect Http Transfer-encoding

415016

Inspect Http Unanswered

415017

Inspect Http Argument match

415018

Inspect Http Header length

415019

Inspect Http status Matched

415020

Inspect Http non-ASCII

416001

Inspect SNMP dropped

419001

Dropped packet

419002

Duplicate TCP SYN

419003

Packet modified

424001

Denied Packet

424002

Dropped Packet

431001

Dropped RTP

431002

Dropped RTCP

500001

Inspect ActiveX

500002

Inspect Java

500003

Inspect TCP Header

500004

Inspect TCP Header

500005

Inspect Connection Terminated

508001

Inspect DCERPC Dropped

508002

Inspect DCERPC Dropped

509001

Prevented No Forward Cmd

607001

Inspect SIP

607002

Inspect SIP

607003

Inspect SIP

608001

Inspect Skinny

608002

Inspect Skinny dropped

608003

Inspect Skinny dropped

608004

Inspect Skinny dropped

608005

Inspect Skinny dropped

609001

Built Local-Host

609002

Teardown Local Host

703001

H225 Unsupported Version

703002

H225 Connection

726001

Inspect Instant Message

Identity Based Firewall Syslog Event IDs and Event Names

EventID

EventName

746001

Import started

746002

Import complete

746003

Import failed

746004

Exceed user group limit

746005

AD Agent down

746006

AD Agent out of sync

746007

Netbios response failed

746008

Netbios started

746009

Netbios stopped

746010

Import user failed

746011

Exceed user limit

746012

User IP add

746013

User IP delete

746014

FQDN Obsolete

746015

FQDN resolved

746016

DNS lookup failed

746017

Import user issued

746018

Import user done

746019

Update AD Agent failed

IPSec Syslog Event IDs and Event Names

EventID

EventName
402114 Invalid SPI received
402115 Unexpected protocol received
402116 Packet doesn't match identity
402117 Non-IPSEC packet received
402118 Invalid fragment offset
402119 Anti-Replay check failure
402120 Authentication failure
402121 Packet dropped
426101 cLACP Port Bundle
426102 cLACP Port Standby
426103 cLACP Port Moved To Bundle From Standby
426104 cLACP Port Unbundled
602103 Path MTU updated
602104 Path MTU exceeded
602303 New SA created
602304 SA deleted
702305 SA expiration - Sequence rollover
702307 SA expiration - Data rollover

NAT Syslog Event ID and Event Names

EventID

EventName
201002 Max connection Exceeded for host
201003 Embryonic limit exceed
201004 UDP connection limit exceed
201005 FTP connection failed
201006 RCMD connection failed
201008 New connection Disallowed
201009 Connection Limit exceed
201010 Embryonic Connection limit exceeded
201011 Connection Limit exceeded
201012 Per-client embryonic connection limit exceeded
201013 Per-client connection limit exceeded
202001 Global NAT exhausted
202005 Embryonic connection error
202011 Connection limit exceeded
305005 No NAT group found
305006 Translation failed
305007 Connection dropped
305008 NAT allocation issue
305009 NAT Created
305010 NAT teardown
305011 PAT created
305012 PAT teardown
305013 Connection denied

SSL VPN Syslog Event IDs and Event Names

EventID

EventName
716001 WebVPN Session Started
716002 WebVPN Session Terminated
716003 WebVPN User URL access
716004 WebVPN User URL access denied
716005 WebVPN ACL error
716006 WebVPN User Disabled
716007 WebVPN Unable to Create
716008 WebVPN Debug
716009 WebVPN ACL error
716010 WebVPN User access network
716011 WebVPN User access
716012 WebVPN User Directory access
716013 WebVPN User file access
716014 WebVPN User file access
716015 WebVPN User file access
716016 WebVPN User file access
716017 WebVPN User file access
716018 WebVPN User file access
716019 WebVPN User file access
716020 WebVPN User file access
716021 WebVPN user access file denied
716022 WebVPN Unable to connect proxy
716023 WebVPN session limit reached
716024 WebVPN User access error
716025 WebVPN User access error
716026 WebVPN User access error
716027 WebVPN User access error
716028 WebVPN User access error
716029 WebVPN User access error
716030 WebVPN User access error
716031 WebVPN User access error
716032 WebVPN User access error
716033 WebVPN User access error
716034 WebVPN User access error
716035 WebVPN User access error
716036 WebVPN User login successful
716037 WebVPN User login failed
716038 WebVPN User Authentication Successful
716039 WebVPN User Authentication Rejected
716040 WebVPN User logging denied
716041 WebVPN ACL hit count
716042 WebVPN ACL hit
716043 WebVPN Port forwarding
716044 WebVPN Bad Parameter
716045 WebVPN Invalid Parameter
716046 WebVPN connection terminated
716047 WebVPN ACL usage
716048 WebVPN memory issue
716049 WebVPN Empty SVC ACL
716050 WebVPN ACL error
716051 WebVPN ACL error
716052 WebVPN Session Terminated
716053 WebVPN SSO Server added
716054 WebVPN SSO Server deleted
716055 WebVPN Authentication Successful
716056 WebVPN Authentication Failed
716057 WebVPN Session terminated
716058 WebVPN Session lost
716059 WebVPN Session resumed
716060 WebVPN Session Terminated
722001 WebVPN SVC Connect request error
722002 WebVPN SVC Connect request error
722003 WebVPN SVC Connect request error
722004 WebVPN SVC Connect request error
722005 WebVPN SVC Connect update issue
722006 WebVPN SVC Invalid address
722007 WebVPN SVC Message
722008 WebVPN SVC Message
722009 WebVPN SVC Message
722010 WebVPN SVC Message
722011 WebVPN SVC Message
722012 WebVPN SVC Message
722013 WebVPN SVC Message
722014 WebVPN SVC Message
722015 WebVPN SVC invalid frame
722016 WebVPN SVC invalid frame
722017 WebVPN SVC invalid frame
722018 WebVPN SVC invalid frame
722019 WebVPN SVC Not Enough Data
722020 WebVPN SVC no address
722021 WebVPN Memory issue
722022 WebVPN SVC connection established
722023 WebVPN SVC connection terminated
722024 WebVPN Compression Enabled
722025 WebVPN Compression Disabled
722026 WebVPN Compression reset
722027 WebVPN Decompression reset
722028 WebVPN Connection Closed
722029 WebVPN SVC Session terminated
722030 WebVPN SVC Session terminated
722031 WebVPN SVC Session terminated
722032 WebVPN SVC connection Replacement
722033 WebVPN SVC Connection established
722034 WebVPN SVC New connection
722035 WebVPN Received Large packet
722036 WebVPN transmitting Large packet
722037 WebVPN SVC connection closed
722038 WebVPN SVC session terminated
722039 WebVPN SVC invalid ACL
722040 WebVPN SVC invalid ACL
722041 WebVPN SVC IPv6 not available
722042 WebVPN invalid protocol
722043 WebVPN DTLS disabled
722044 WebVPN unable to request address
722045 WebVPN Connection terminated
722046 WebVPN Session terminated
722047 WebVPN Tunnel terminated
722048 WebVPN Tunnel terminated
722049 WebVPN Session terminated
722050 WebVPN Session terminated
722051 WebVPN address assigned
722053 WebVPN Unknown client
723001 WebVPN Citrix connection Up
723002 WebVPN Citrix connection Down
723003 WebVPN Citrix no memory issue
723004 WebVPN Citrix bad flow control
723005 WebVPN Citrix no channel
723006 WebVPN Citrix SOCKS error
723007 WebVPN Citrix connection list broken
723008 WebVPN Citrix invalid SOCKS
723009 WebVPN Citrix invalid connection
723010 WebVPN Citrix invalid connection
723011 WebVPN citrix Bad SOCKS
723012 WebVPN Citrix Bad SOCKS
723013 WebVPN Citrix invalid connection
723014 WebVPN Citrix connected to Server
724001 WebVPN Session not allowed
724002 WebVPN Session terminated
724003 WebVPN CSD
724004 WebVPN CSD
725001 SSL handshake Started
725002 SSL Handshake completed
725003 SSL Client session resume
725004 SSL Client request Authentication
725005 SSL Server request authentication
725006 SSL Handshake failed
725007 SSL Session terminated
725008 SSL Client Cipher
725009 SSL Server Cipher
725010 SSL Cipher
725011 SSL Device choose Cipher
725012 SSL Device choose Cipher
725013 SSL Server choose cipher
725014 SSL LIB error
725015 SSL client certificate failed

Time Attributes in a Syslog Event

Understanding the purposes of the different time-stamps in the Event Logging page will help you filter and find the events that interest you.

Number

Label

Description

1

Date/Time

The time the Secure Event Connector (SEC) processed the event. This may not be the same as the time the firewall inspected that traffic. Same value as timestamp.

2

EventSecond

Equals with LastPacketSecond.

3

FirstPacketSecond

The time at which the connection opened. The firewall inspects the packet at this time.

The value of the FirstPacketSecond is calculated by subtracting the ConnectionDuration from the LastPacketSecond.

For connection events logged at the beginning of the connection, the value of FirstPacketSecond, LastPacketSecond, and EventSecond will all be the same.

4

LastPacketSecond

The time at which the connection closed. For connection events logged at the end of the connection, LastPacketSecond and EventSecond will be equal.

5

timestamp

The time the Secure Event Connector (SEC) processed the event. This may not be the same as the time the firewall inspected that traffic. Same value as Date/Time.

6

Syslog TimeStamp

Represents the syslog originated time if ‘logging timestamp’ is used. If the syslog does not have this info, the time the SEC received the event is reflected.

7

NetflowTimeStamp

The time at which the ASA finished gathering enough flow records/events to fill a NetFlow packet to then send them off to a flow collector.

Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics and Dynamic Entity Modeling

Required License: Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

Secure Cloud Analytics is a software as a service (SaaS) solution that monitors your on-premises and cloud-based network deployments. By gathering information about your network traffic from sources including firewall events and network flow data, it creates observations about the traffic and automatically identifies roles for network entities based on their traffic patterns. Using this information combined with other sources of threat intelligence, such as Talos, Secure Cloud Analytics generates alerts, which constitute a warning that there is behavior that may be malicious in nature. Along with the alerts, Secure Cloud Analytics provides network and host visibility, and contextual information it has gathered to provide you with a better basis to research the alert and locate sources of malicious behavior.

Dynamic Entity Modeling

Dynamic entity modeling tracks the state of your network by performing a behavioral analysis on firewall events and network flow data. In the context of Secure Cloud Analytics, an entity is something that can be tracked over time, such as a host or endpoint on your network. Dynamic entity modeling gathers information about entities based on the traffic they transmit and activities they take on your network. Secure Cloud Analytics, integrated with a Logging Analytics and Detection license, can draw from firewall events and other traffic information in order to determine the types of traffic the entity usually transmits. If you purchase a Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license, Secure Cloud Analytics can also include NetFlow and other traffic information in modeling entity traffic. Secure Cloud Analytics updates these models over time, as the entities continue to send traffic, and potentially send different traffic, to keep an up-to-date model of each entity. From this information, Secure Cloud Analytics identifies:

  • Roles for the entity, which are a descriptor of what the entity usually does. For example, if an entity sends traffic that is generally associated with email servers, Secure Cloud Analytics assigns the entity an Email Server role. The role/entity relationship can be many-to-one, as entities may perform multiple roles.

  • Observations for the entity, which are facts about the entity's behavior on the network, such as a heartbeat connection with an external IP address, or a remote access session established with another entity. If you integrate with CDO, these facts can be obtained from firewall events. If you also purchase a Total Network Analytics and Monitoring, license, the system can also obtain facts from NetFlow, and generate observations from both firewall events and NetFlow. Observations on their own do not carry meaning beyond the fact of what they represent. A typical customer may have many thousands of observations and a few alerts.

Alerts and Analysis

Based on the combination of roles, observations, and other threat intelligence, Secure Cloud Analytics generates alerts, which are actionable items that represent possible malicious behavior as identified by the system. Note that one alert may represent multiple observations. If a firewall logs multiple connection events related to the same connection and entities, this may result in only one alert.

For example, a New Internal Device observation on its own does not constitute possible malicious behavior. However, over time, if the entity transmits traffic consistent with a Domain Controller, then the system assigns a Domain Controller role to the entity. If the entity subsequently establishes a connection to an external server that it has not established a connection with previously, using unusual ports, and transfers large amounts of data, the system would log a New Large Connection (External) observation and an Exceptional Domain Controller observation. If that external server is identified as on a Talos watchlist, then the combination of all this information would lead Secure Cloud Analytics to generate an alert for this entity's behavior, prompting you to take further action to research, and remediate malicious behavior.

When you open an alert in the Secure Cloud Analytics web portal UI, you can view the supporting observations that led the system to generate the alert. From these observations, you can also view additional context about the entities involved, including the traffic that they transmitted, and external threat intelligence if it is available. You can also see other observations and alerts that entities were involved with, and determine if this behavior is tied to other potentially malicious behavior.

Note that when you view and close alerts in Secure Cloud Analytics, you cannot allow or block traffic from the Secure Cloud Analytics UI. You must update your firewall access control rules to allow or block traffic, if you deployed your devices in active mode, or your firewall access control rules if your firewalls are deployed in passive mode.

Working with Alerts Based on Firewall Events

Required License: Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

Alerts Workflow

An alert's workflow is based around its status. When the system generates an alert, the default status is Open, and no user is assigned. When you view the Alerts summary, all open alerts are displayed by default, as these are of immediate concern.

Note: If you have a Total Network Analytics and Monitoring license, your alerts can be based on observations generated from NetFlow, observations generated from firewall events, or observations from both data sources.

As you review the Alerts summary, you can assign, tag, and update status on alerts as an initial triage. You can use the filters and search functionality to locate specific alerts, or display alerts of different statuses, or associated with different tags or assignees. You can set an alert's status to Snoozed, in which case it does not reappear in the list of open alerts until the snooze period elapses. You can also remove Snoozed status from an alert, to display it as an open alert again. As you review alerts, you can assign them to yourself or another user in the system. Users can search for all alerts assigned to their username.

From the Alerts summary, you can view an alert detail page. This page allows you to review additional context about the supporting observations that resulted in this alert, and additional context about the entities involved in this alert. This information can help you pinpoint the actual issue, in order to further research the issue on your network, and potentially resolve malicious behavior.

As you research within the Secure Cloud Analytics web portal UI, in CDO, and on your network, you can leave comments with the alert that describe your findings. This helps create a record for your research that you can reference in the future.

If you complete your analysis, you can update the status to Closed, and have it no longer appear by default as an open alert. You can also re-open a closed alert in the future if circumstances change.

The following presents general guidelines and suggestions for how to investigate a given alert. Because Secure Cloud Analytics provides additional context when it logs an alert, you can use this context to help guide your investigation.

These steps are meant to be neither comprehensive, nor all-inclusive. They merely offer a general framework with which to start investigating an alert.

In general, you can take the following steps when you review an alert:

  1. Triage open alerts

  2. Snooze alerts for later analysis

  3. Update the alert for further investigation

  4. Review the alert and start your investigation

  5. Examine the entity and users

  6. Remediate issues using Secure Cloud Analytics

  7. Update and close the alert

Triage open alerts

Triage the open alerts, especially if more than one have yet to be investigated:

Ask the following questions:

  • Have you configured this alert type as high priority?

  • Did you set a high sensitivity for the affected subnet?

  • Is this unusual behavior from a new entity on your network?

  • What is the entity's normal role, and how does the behavior in this alert fit that role?

  • Is this an exceptional deviation from normal behavior for this entity?

  • If a user is involved, is this expected behavior from the user, or exceptional?

  • Is protected or sensitive data at risk of being compromised?

  • How severe is the impact to your network if this behavior is allowed to continue?

  • If there is communication with external entities, have these entities established connections with other entities on your network in the past?

If this is a high priority alert, consider quarantining the entity from the internet, or otherwise closing its connections, before continuing your investigation.

Snooze alerts for later analysis

Snooze alerts when they are of lesser priority, as compared to other alerts. For example, if your organization is repurposing an email server as an FTP server, and the system generates an Emergent Profile alert (indicating that an entity's current traffic matches a behavior profile that it did not previously match), you can snooze this alert as it is intended behavior, and revisit it at a later date. A snoozed alert does not show up with the open alerts; you must specifically filter to review these snoozed alerts.

Snooze an alert:

Procedure

Step 1

Click Close Alert.

Step 2

In the Snooze this alert pane, select a snooze period from the drop-down.

Step 3

Click Save.

What to do next

When you are ready to review these alerts, you can unsnooze them. This sets the status to Open, and displays the alert alongside the other Open alerts.

Unsnooze a snoozed alert:

  • From a snoozed alert, click Unsnooze Alert.

Update the alert for further investigation

Open the alert detail:

Procedure

Step 1

Select Monitor > Alerts.

Step 2

Click an alert type name.
What to do next

Based on your initial triage and prioritization, assign the alert and tag it:

  1. Select a user from the Assignee drop-down to assign the alert, so a user can start investigating.

  2. Select one or more Tags from the drop-down to add tags to the alert, to better categorize your alert's for future identification, as well as to try and establish long-term patterns in your alerts.

  3. Enter a Comment on this alert, then click Comment to leave comments as necessary to track your initial findings, and assist the person assigned to the alert. The alert tracks both system comments and user comments.

Review the alert and start your investigation

If you are reviewing an assigned alert, review the alert detail to understand why Secure Cloud Analytics generated an alert. Review the supporting observations to understand what these observations mean for the source entity.

Note that if the alert was generated based on firewall events, the system does not note that your firewall deployment was the source of this alert.

View all of the supporting observations for this source entity to understand its general behavior and patterns, and see if this activity may be part of a longer trend:

SUMMARY STEPS

  1. From the alert detail, click the arrow icon () next to an observation type to view all logged observations of that type.
  2. Click the arrow icon () next to All Observations for Network to view all logged observations for this alert's source entity.

DETAILED STEPS

Step 1

From the alert detail, click the arrow icon () next to an observation type to view all logged observations of that type.

Step 2

Click the arrow icon () next to All Observations for Network to view all logged observations for this alert's source entity.

Download the supporting observations in a comma-separated value file, if you want to perform additional analysis on these observations:

  • From the alert detail, in the Supporting Observations pane, click CSV.

From the observations, determine if the source entity behavior is indicative of malicious behavior. If the source entity established connections with multiple external entities, determine if the external entities are somehow related, such as if they all have similar geolocation information, or their IP addresses are from the same subnet.

View additional context surrounding the source entity from a source entity IP address or hostname, including other alerts and observations it may be involved in, information about the device itself, and what type of session traffic it is transmitting:

  • Select Alerts from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view all alerts related to the entity.

  • Select Observations from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view all observations related to the entity.

  • Select Device from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view information about the device.

  • Select Session Traffic from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view session traffic related to this entity.

  • Select Copy from the IP address or hostname drop-down to copy the IP address or hostname.

Note that the source entity in Secure Cloud Analytics is always internal to your network. Contrast this with the Initiator IP in a firewall event, which indicates the entity that initiated a connection, and may be internal or external to your network.

From the observations, examine information about other external entities. Examine the geolocation information, and determine if any of the geolocation data or Umbrella data identifies a malicious entity. View the traffic generated by these entities. Check whether Talos, AbuseIPDB, or Google have any information on these entities. Find the IP address on multiple days and see what other types of connections the external entity established with entities on your network. If necessary, locate those internal entities and determine if there is any evidence of compromise or unintended behavior.

Review the context for an external entity IP address or hostname with which the source entity established a connection:

  • Select IP Traffic from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view recent traffic information for this entity.

  • Select Session Traffic from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view recent session traffic information for this entity.

  • Select AbuseIPDB from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view information about this entity on AbuseIPDB's website.

  • Select Cisco Umbrella from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view information about this entity on Cisco Umbrella's website.

  • Select Google Search from the IP address or hostname drop-down to search for this IP address on Google.

  • Select Talos Intelligence from the IP address or hostname drop-down to view information about this information on Talos's website.

  • Select Add IP to watchlist from the IP address or hostname drop-down to add this entity to the watchlist.

  • Select Find IP on multiple days from the IP address or hostname drop-down to search for this entity's traffic from the past month.

  • Select Copy from the IP address or hostname drop-down to copy the IP address or hostname.

Note that connected entities in Secure Cloud Analytics are always external to your network. Contrast this with the Responder IP in a firewall event, which indicates the entity that responded to a connection request, and may be internal or external to your network.

Leave comments as to your findings.

  • From the alert detail, enter a Comment on this alert, then click Comment.

Examine the entity and users

After you review the alert in the Secure Cloud Analytics portal UI, you can perform an additional examination on a source entity directly, any users that may have been involved with this alert, and other related entities.

  • Determine where the source entity is on your network, physically or in the cloud, and access it directly. Locate the log files for this entity. If it is a physical entity on your network, access the device to review the log information, and see if there is any information as to what caused this behavior. If it is a virtual entity, or stored in the cloud, access the logs and search for entries related to this entity. Examine the logs for further information on unauthorized logins, unapproved configuration changes, and the like.

  • Examine the entity. Determine if you can identify malware or a vulnerability on the entity itself. See if there has been some malicious change, including if there are physical changes to a device, such as a USB stick that is not approved by your organization.

  • Determine if a user on your network, or from outside your network, was involved. Ask the user what they were doing if possible. If the user is unavailable, determine if they were supposed to have access, and if a situation occurred that prompted this behavior, such as a terminated employee uploading files to an external server before leaving the company.

Leave comments as to your findings:

  • From the alert detail, enter a Comment on this alert, then click Comment.

Update and close the alert

Add additional tags based on your findings:

Procedure

Step 1

In the Secure Cloud Analytics portal UI, select Monitor > Alerts.

Step 2

Select one or more Tags from the drop-down.

Add final comments describing the results of your investigation, and any remediation steps taken:

  • From an alert's detail, enter a Comment on this alert, then click Comment.

Close the alert, and mark it as helpful or not helpful:

  1. From an alert's detail, click Close Alert.

  2. Select Yes if the alert was helpful, or No if the alert was unhelpful. Note that this does not necessarily mean that the alert resulted from malicious behavior, just that the alert was helpful to your organization.

  3. Click Save.

What to do next

Reopen a closed alert

If you discover additional information related to a closed alert, or want to add more comments related to that alert, you can reopen it, changing the status to Open. You can then make changes as necessary to the alert, then close it again when your additional investigation is complete.

Reopen a closed alert:

  • From a closed alert's detail, click Reopen Alert.

Modifying Alert Priorities

Required License: Logging Analytics and Detection or Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

Alert types come with default priorities, which affect how sensitive the system is to generating alerts of this type. Alerts default to low or normal priority, based on Cisco intelligence and other factors. Based on your network environment, you may want to reprioritize alert types, to emphasize certain alerts that you are concerned with. You can configure any alert type to be low, normal, or high priority.

  • Select Monitor > Alerts.

  • Click the settings drop-down icon (), then select Alert Types and Priorities.

  • Click the edit icon () next to an alert type and select low, medium, or high to change the priority.

Searching for and Filtering Events in the Event Logging Page

Searching and filtering the historical and live event tables for specific events, works the same way as it does when searching and filtering for other information in CDO. As you add filter criteria, CDO starts to limit what it displays on the Event Logging page. You can also enter search criteria in the search field to find events with specific values. If you combine the filtering and searching mechanisms, search tries to find the value you entered from among the results displayed after filtering the events.

Following are the options to conduct a search for event logs:

Filtering works the same way for live events as it does for historical events with the exception that live events cannot be filtered by time.

Learn about these filtering methods:

Filter Live or Historical Events

This procedure explains how to use event filtering to see a subset of events in the Event Logging page. If you find yourself repeatedly using certain filter criteria, you can create a customized filter and save it. See Customizable Event Filters for more information.

Procedure

Step 1

In the navigation bar, choose Analytics > Event Logging

Step 2

Click either the Historical or Live tab.

Step 3

Click the filter button . Click the pin icon to pin the Filter pane and keep it open.

Step 4

Click a view tab that has no saved filter elements.

Step 5

Select the event details you want to filter by:

  • FTD Events

    • Connection: Displays connection events from access control rules.

    • File: Displays events reported by file policies in access control rules.

    • Intrusion: Displays events reported by intrusion policy in access control rules.

    • Malware: Displays events reported by malware policies in access control rules.

  • ASA Events: These event types represent groups of syslog or NetFlow events.

    See CDO Event Types for more information about events.

    • Parsed Events: Parsed syslog events contain more event attributes than other syslog events and CDO is able to return search results based on those attributes more quickly. Parsed events are not a filtering category; however, parsed event IDs are displayed in the Event Types column in italics. Event IDs that are not displayed in italics are not parsed.

  • Time Range: Click the Start or End time fields to select the beginning and end of the time period you want to display. The time stamp is displayed in the local time of your computer.

  • Action: Specifies the security action defined by the rule. The value you enter must be an exact match to what you want to find; however, the case doesn't matter. Enter different values for connection, file, intrusion, malware, syslog, and NetFlow event types:

    • For connection event types, the filter searches for matches in the AC_RuleAction attribute. Those values could be Allow, Block, Trust.

    • For file event types, the filter searches for matches in the FileAction attribute. Those values could be Allow, Block, Trust.

    • For intrusion event types, the filter searches for matches in the InLineResult attribute. Those values could be Allowed, Blocked, Trusted.

    • For malware event types, the filter searches for matches in the FileAction attribute. Those values could be Cloud Lookup Timeout.

    • For syslog and NetFlow events types, the filter searches for matches in the Action attribute.

  • Sensor ID: The Sensor ID is the the Management IP address from which events are sent to the Secure Event Connector.

    For an FDM-managed device, the Sensor ID is typically the IP address of the device's management interface.

  • IP addresses

    • Initiator : This is the IP address of the source of the network traffic. The value of the Initiator address field corresponds to the value of the InitiatorIP field in the event details. You can enter a single address, such as 10.10.10.100, or a network defined in CIDR notation such as 10.10.10.0/24.

    • Responder: This is the destination IP address of the packet. The value of the Destination address field corresponds to the value in the ResponderIP field in the event details. You can enter a single address, such as 10.10.10.100, or a network defined in CIDR notation such as 10.10.10.0/24.

  • Ports

    • Initiator: The port or ICMP type used by the session initiator. The value of the source port corresponds to the value fo the InitiatorPort in the event details. (Add a range - starting port ending port and space in between or both initiator and responder)

    • Reponder: The port or ICMP code used by the session responder. The value of the destination port corresponds to the value of the ResponderPort in the event details.

  • NetFlow: ASA NetFlow events are different than syslog events. The NetFlow filter searches for all NetFlow events IDs that resulted in an NSEL record. Those "NetFlow event IDs" are defined in the Cisco ASA NetFlow Implementation Guide.

Step 6

(Optional) Save your filter as a custom filter by clicking out of the view tab.

Filter Only NetFlow Events

This procedure finds only ASA NetFlow events:

Procedure

Step 1

From the left menu, choose Analytics > Event Logging.

Step 2

Click the Filter icon and pin the filter open.

Step 3

Check Netflow ASA Event filter.

Step 4

Clear all other ASA Event filters.

Only ASA NetFlow events are displayed in the Event Logging table.

Filter for ASA or FDM-Managed Device Syslog Events but not ASA NetFlow Events

This procedure finds only syslog events:

Procedure

Step 1

In the left pane, choose Analytics > Event Logging.

Step 2

Click the Filter icon and pin the filter open.

Step 3

Scroll to the bottom of the Filter pane and make sure the Include NetFlow events filter is unchecked.

Step 4

Scroll back up to the ASA Events filter tree, and make sure the NetFlow box is unchecked.

Step 5

Select the rest of your ASA or FTD filter criteria.

Combine Filter Elements

Filtering events generally follows the standard filtering rules in CDO: The filtering categories are "AND-ed" and the values within the categories are "OR-ed." You can also combine the filter with your own search criteria. In the case of event filters; however, the device event filters are also "OR-ed." For example, if these values were chosen in the filter:

With this filter in use, CDO would display threat defense device connection events or ASA BotNet or Firewall Traffic events, and those events that occurred between the two times in the time range, and those events that also contain the ResponderPort 443. You can filter by historical events within a time range. The live events page always displays the most recent events.

Search for Specific Attribute: Value Pairs

You can search for live or historical events by entering an event attribute and a value in the search field. The easiest way to do this is to click the attribute in the Event Logging table that you want to search for, and CDO enters it in the Search field. The events you can click on will be blue when you roll over them. Here is an example:

In this example, the search started by rolling over the InitiatorIP value of 10.10.11.11 and clicking it. Initiator IP and it's value were added to the search string. Next, Event Type, 3 was rolled-over and clicked and added to the search string and an AND was added by CDO. So the result of this search will be a list of events that were initiated from 10.10.11.11 AND that are 3 event types.

Notice the magnifying glass next to the value 3 in the example above. If you roll-over the magnifying glass, you could also choose an AND, OR, AND NOT, OR NOT operator to go with the value you want to add to the search.

In the example below, "OR" is chosen. The result of this search will be a list of events that were initiated from 10.10.11.11 OR are a 106023 event type. Note that if the search field is empty and you right click a value from the table, only NOT is available as there is no other value.

As long as you rollover a value and it is highlighted blue, you can add that value to the search string.

AND, OR, NOT, AND NOT, OR NOT Filter Operators

Here are the behaviors of "AND", "OR", "NOT", "AND NOT", and "OR NOT" used in a search string:

AND

Use the AND operator in the filter string, to find events that include all attributes. The AND operator cannot begin a search string.

For example, the search string below will search for events that contain the TCP protocol AND that originated from InitiatorIP address 10.10.10.43, AND that were sent from the Initiator port 59614. One would expect that with each additional AND statement, the number of events that meet the criteria would be small and smaller. 

Protocol: "tcp" AND InitiatorIP: "10.10.10.43" AND InitiatorPort: "59614"

OR

Use the OR operator in the filter string, to find events that include any of the attributes. The OR operator cannot begin a search string.

For example, the search string below will display events in the event viewer that include events that include the TCP protocol, OR that originated from InitiatorIP address 10.10.10.43, OR that were sent from the Initiator port 59614. One would expect that with each additional OR statement, the number of events that meet the criteria would be bigger and bigger. 

Protocol: "tcp" OR InitiatorIP: "10.10.10.43" OR InitiatorPort: "59614"

NOT

Use this only at the beginning of a search string to exclude events with certain attribtues. For example, this search string would exclude any event with the InitiatorIP 192.168.25.3 from the results. 

 NOT InitiatorIP: "192.168.25.3"

AND NOT

Use the AND NOT operator in the filter string to exclude events that contain certain attributes. AND NOT cannot be used at the beginning of a search string.

For example, this filter string will display events with the InitiatorIP 192.168.25.3 but not those whose ResponderIP address is also 10.10.10.1. 

 InitiatorIP: "192.168.25.3" AND NOT ResponderIP: "10.10.10.1"

You can also combine NOT and AND NOT to exclude several attributes. For example this filter string, will exclude events with InitiatorIP 192.168.25.3 and events with ResponderIP 10.10.10.1 

NOT InitiatorIP: "192.168.25.3" AND NOT ResponderIP: "10.10.10.1"

OR NOT

Use the OR NOT operator to include search results that exclude certain elements. The OR NOT operator cannot be used at the beginning of a search string.

For example, this search string will find events with the Protocol of TCP, OR that have the InitiatorIP of 10.10.10.43, or those NOT from InitiatorPort 59614. 

Protocol: "tcp" OR InitiatorIP: "10.10.10.43" OR NOT InitiatorPort: "59614"

You could also think of it this way: Search for (Protocol: "tcp") OR (InitiatorIP: "10.10.10.43") OR (NOT InitiatorPort: "59614").

Wildcard Searches

Use an asterisk (*) to represent a wildcard in the value field of an attribute:value search to find results within events. For example, this filter string, 

 URL:*feedback*

will find strings in the URL attribute field of events that contain the string feedback.

Search Historical Events in the Background

CDO provides you the ability to define a search criteria and search for event logs based on any defined search criteria. Using the background search capability, you can also perform event log searches in the background, and view the search results once the background search is completed.

Based on the subscription alert and service integrations you have configured, you are notified once the background search has been completed.

You can view, download, or delete the search results directly from the Background Searches page. You can also schedule a background search to occur for a one-time event or schedule a recurring schedule. Navigate to the Notification Settings page to view or modify the subscription options.

Search for Events in the Events Logging Page

Use the search and background search capabilities to view all logged events in the Event Logging page. Note that background searches can only be performed for historical events.

Procedure

Step 1

In the navigation bar, choose Analytics > Event Logging.

Step 2

Click either the Historical or Live tab.

Step 3

Navigate to the search bar, type the search expression, and enter the Search button to execute the search. You can narrow or expand the search with an Absolute Time Range or Relative Time Range.

Alternatively, from the Search drop-down list, choose Search in Background to execute the search in the background while you move away from the search page. You are notified when the search results are ready.

If you click the Search button, the results directly appear in the event table. Upon selecting any specific search result, the search criteria appears in the search bar for an easy reference.

If you choose to execute the search in the background, the search operation is queued, and you are notified once the search is completed. You are allowed to execute multiple search queries in the background.

Step 4

Click the Background Searches button to view the Background Searches page.

The Background Searches page displays a list of search results. You can choose to view, download, or delete the search results. You can also navigate to the Notification Settings page to view or modify the subscription options. Select the Start a Background Search button to initiate a search from this page.

What to do next

You can turn any background search into a scheduled background search if you need a recurring query. See Schedule a Background Search in the Event Viewer for more information.

Download a Background Search

Search results and schedules queries are stored for seven days before CDO automatically removes them. Download a copy of the background search in .CSV format.

Procedure

Step 1

In the left pane go to Analytics > Event Logging.

Step 2

Click Background Searches > Actions > Download.

Step 3

Locate your search. Scheduled searches are stored under the Queries tab.

Step 4

Click Download. The background search file in .CSV format gets automatically downloaded to the default storage location on your local drive.

Data Storage Plans

You need to purchase a data storage plan that corresponds to the volume of events the Cisco cloud receives from your onboarded ASA and FTD devices on a daily basis. This volume is referred to as your daily ingest rate. Data plans are available in whole number amounts of GB/day and in 1-, 3-, or 5-year terms. The most effective method to determine your ingest rate is to participate in a free trial of Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) before making a purchase. This trial will provide an accurate estimate of your event volume.

By default, you receive 90 days of rolling data storage. This policy ensures that the most recent 90 days of events are stored in the Cisco cloud, and data older than 90 days is deleted.

You have the option to upgrade to additional event retention beyond the default 90 days or to increase daily volume (GB/day) through a change order to an existing subscription. Billing for these upgrades will be prorated for the remainder of the subscription term.

See the Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) Ordering Guide for all the details about data plans.


Note

If you have a Security Analytics and Logging license and data plan, then obtain a different Security Analytics and Logging license, you are not required change your data plan. Similarly, if your network traffic throughput changes and you obtain a different data plan, this change alone does not require you to obtain a different Security Analytics and Logging license.

What data gets counted against my allotment?

All events sent to the Secure Event Connector accumulate in the Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) cloud and count against your data allotment.

Filtering what you see in the events viewer does not decrease the number of events stored in the Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) cloud, it reduces the number of events you can see in the events viewer.

We're using up our storage allotment quickly, what can we do?

Here are two approaches to address that problem:

  • Request more storage.

  • Consider reducing the number of rules that log events. You can log events from SSL policy rules, security intelligence rules, access control rules, intrusion policies, and file and malware policies. Review what you are currently logging to determine if it is necessary to log events from as many rules and policies.

Extend Event Storage Duration and Increase Event Storage Capacity

Security Analytics and Logging customers receive 90 days of event storage when they purchase any of these licenses.

  • Logging and Troubleshooting

  • Logging Analytics and Detection

  • Total Network Analytics and Monitoring

You can choose to upgrade your license to have 1, 2, or 3 years worth of rolling event storage at the time you first purchase your license or at any time during the duration of your license.

At the time you first purchase your Security Analytics and Logging license, you will be asked if you want to upgrade your storage capacity. If you answer, "yes," an additional Product Identifier (PID) will be added to the list of PIDs you are purchasing.

If you decide in the middle of your license term to extend your rolling event storage or increase the amount of event cloud storage, you can:

Procedure

Step 1

Log in to your account on Cisco Commerce.

Step 2

Select your CDO PID.

Step 3

Follow the prompts to upgrade the length or capacity of your storage capacity.

The increased cost will be pro-rated based for the term remaining on your existing license. See the Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) Ordering Guide for detailed instructions.

View Security Analytics and Logging Data Plan Usage

To see your monthly logging limit, the amount of storage you have used, and when the usage period resets to zero, do the following:

Procedure

Step 1

From the left navigation bar, click Settings > Logging Settings.

Step 2

You can also click View Historical Usage to see up to the last 12 months of storage usage.

Finding Your Device's TCP, UDP, and NSEL Port Used for Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS)

Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) allows you to send events from your ASA or FDM-managed devices to certain UDP, TCP, or NSEL ports on the Secure Event Connector (SEC). The SEC then forwards those events to the Cisco cloud.

If these ports aren't already in use, the SEC makes them available to receive events and the Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS) documentation recommends using them when you configure the feature.

  • TCP: 10125

  • UDP: 10025

  • NSEL: 10425

If those ports are already in use, before you configure Secure Logging Analytics (SaaS), look at your SEC device details to determine what ports it is actually using to receive events.

To find the port numbers the SEC uses:

Procedure

Step 1

From the left pane, click Tools & Services > Secure Connectors.

Step 2

In the Secure Connectors page, select the SEC you want to send events to.

Step 3

In the Details pane, you will see the TCP, UDP, and NetFlow (NSEL) port you should send events to.