Splunk® Enterprise

Securing Splunk Enterprise

Splunk Enterprise version 8.2 is no longer supported as of September 30, 2023. See the Splunk Software Support Policy for details. For information about upgrading to a supported version, see How to upgrade Splunk Enterprise.
This documentation does not apply to the most recent version of Splunk® Enterprise. For documentation on the most recent version, go to the latest release.

How to secure and harden your Splunk platform instance

Use the checklist in this topic as a roadmap to help you secure your Splunk platform installation and protect your data.

Set up authenticated users and manage user access on the Splunk platform

You can harden a Splunk platform deployment by carefully managing who can access the deployment at a given time.

Additional hardening options for Splunk Enterprise and forwarding tier infrastructure only

Use certificates and encryption to secure communications for your Splunk Enterprise configuration

Splunk manages Splunk Cloud Platform securely, including its transport layer security (TLS) certificates within the deployment. You don't need to worry about certificates or configurations if you only use SCP or you forward data to SCP.

If you want to secure your SCP forwarding tier infrastructure, or you run Splunk Enterprise in any manner, then you must manage these certificates yourself.

Splunk Enterprise and the universal forwarder come with a set of default certificates and keys that demonstrate encryption. Where possible, deploy your own certificates and configure them to secure Splunk Enterprise and local forwarding communications on the instances that you manage. See Introduction to securing the Splunk platform with TLS.

Harden your Splunk Enterprise instances to reduce vulnerability and risk

Audit your Splunk Enterprise instance regularly

Audit events provide information about what has changed in your Splunk platform instance configuration. It gives you the where and when, as well as the identity of who implemented the change.

  • Audit your system regularly to monitor user and administrator access, as well as other activities that could tip you off to unsafe practices or security breaches.
  • Keep an eye on activities within your Splunk platform deployment, such as searches or configuration changes. You can use this information for compliance reporting, troubleshooting, and attribution during incidence response.
  • Audit events are especially useful in distributed Splunk Enterprise configurations for detecting configuration and access control changes across many Splunk Enterprise instances. To learn more, see Audit Splunk Enterprise activity.
  • Use the file system-based monitoring available out of the box on most Splunk-supported operating systems. For more information about monitoring, see Monitor Files and Directories in the Getting Data In Manual.
Last modified on 11 February, 2023
About securing the Splunk platform   Install Splunk Enterprise securely

This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk® Enterprise: 8.0.0, 8.0.1, 8.0.2, 8.0.3, 8.0.4, 8.0.5, 8.0.6, 8.0.7, 8.0.8, 8.0.9, 8.0.10, 8.1.0, 8.1.1, 8.1.2, 8.1.3, 8.1.4, 8.1.5, 8.1.6, 8.1.7, 8.1.8, 8.1.9, 8.1.10, 8.1.11, 8.1.12, 8.1.13, 8.1.14, 8.2.0, 8.2.1, 8.2.2, 8.2.3, 8.2.4, 8.2.5, 8.2.6, 8.2.7, 8.2.8, 8.2.9, 8.2.10, 8.2.11, 8.2.12


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