Add a CloudTrail input for the Splunk App for AWS

Create a CloudTrail input to gather data about management and change events in your AWS environment.

If you have multiple AWS Account IDs from which you want to gather CloudTrail data, Amazon Web Services recommends that you configure a single S3 bucket and SNS queue to collect them, but doing so alters the format of the SQS and CloudTrail messages produced. The Splunk App for AWS can parse these message formats if you configure an S3 input instead of a CloudTrail input and manually set the source type to aws:cloudtrail. An input configured this way is less performant than configuring a CloudTrail input, but this is Amazon Web Service's recommended configuration.

Note: Although AWS offers global trails, or one CloudTrail configuration in one region to collect trail data from all regions, SQS messages do not arrive as expected in this case. Configure separate CloudTrails for each region to ensure that you capture all your data. Alternatively, configure an S3 input instead of a CloudTrail input to collect a global trail and manually set the source type to aws:cloudtrail.

Prerequisites

Before you can successfully configure a CloudTrail input, you need to:

1. Set up the CloudTrail service for all the regions that you want to track data in the Splunk App for AWS. If you have not already done this, see Configure your AWS services for the Splunk App for AWS in this manual.

2. Make sure that the account friendly name you use to configure this input corresponds to an AWS Account Access Key ID or EC2 IAM role that has the necessary permissions to gather this data. If you have not already done this, see Configure your AWS permissions for the Splunk App for AWS in this manual.

Add a new CloudTrail input

1. In the app, click Configure in the app navigation bar.

2. Under Data Sources, in the CloudTrail box, click New Input.

3. Select the friendly name of the AWS Account that you want to use to collect CloudTrail data. If you have not yet configured the account you need, click Add New Account to configure one now.

4. Under SQS Configurations, select a Region for which you have enabled CloudTrail.

5. Click Select an SQS queue to view the SQS queue names for the region you have selected. If you do not see any, verify that you have completed all steps in the prerequisites. Do not configure multiple CloudTrail inputs pulling data from the same SQS queue. Having multiple inputs can cause conflicts when one input tries to delete an SQS message that another input is attempting to access and parse.

6. Select the queue name that is subscribed to the SNS topic for CloudTrail notifications for this region.

7. Click the + button to add another region.

8. Repeat steps 4 - 6 until you have configured SQS queues for all the regions where you have CloudTrail enabled in AWS.

9. (Recommended) Configure a custom Index.

10. Click Add to save and enable this data input.

When you create the data input, the Splunk App for AWS immediately begins collecting your CloudTrail data.

Edit or delete a CloudTrail input

You can view, edit, or delete your existing CloudTrail inputs from the CloudTrail Inputs screen.

1. In the app, click Configure in the app navigation bar.

2. Under Data Sources, in the CloudTrail box, click the link that tells you how many inputs you currently have configured for CloudTrail.

3. The CloudTrail screen displays a list of CloudTrail inputs, organized by the name auto-assigned to the input.

4. From here, you can click the names to open the individual inputs to edit them, or you can delete an input by clicking the trash can icon.