Splunk® Enterprise

Securing Splunk Enterprise

Splunk Enterprise version 7.1 is no longer supported as of October 31, 2020. 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.

Securing Splunk Enterprise with FIPS

The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) uses government-certified versions of some algorithms to meet regulatory guidelines. It should not be considered a security enhancement by itself, and might potentially reduce performance on your system. Enable FIPS if it is a regulatory requirement for your environment.

Splunk Enterprise and the Universal Forwarder use an embedded FIPS 140-2-validated cryptographic module (Certificate #3126 Module Version fips-2.0.12) running on various platforms per FIPS 140-2 Implementation Guidance section G.5 guidelines.

Key points to enabling FIPS

There are several things that you must understand when you enable FIPS on Splunk Enterprise:

  • You must enable FIPS mode before you start Splunk Enterprise. FIPS mode is disabled except when it runs on a Linux machine that runs a kernel in FIPS mode.
  • FIPS is automatically enabled if you run Splunk software on a Linux machine that runs a kernel in FIPS mode.
  • The FIPS module disables the use of some cryptographic algorithms in the instance of Python that Splunk software uses to run apps (such as Message Digest 5 (MD5) and Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4).
  • Any Splunk apps you want to run on a FIPS-enabled instance must be certified to run in FIPS mode and cannot have dependencies on algorithms like MD5 or RC4.

Enable FIPS

Always enable FIPS mode upon initial Splunk software installation. If you install the software without FIPS mode enabled, you cannot later upgrade it to a FIPS version, and must either reinstall, or install a new version.

  1. Before you start Splunk Enterprise for the first time, use a text editor to edit the $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/splunk-launch.conf configuration file.
  2. Add the following line to the file: 
    SPLUNK_FIPS=1
  3. Start Splunk software. It enables FIPS mode during the installation.

Use indexes with FIPS enabled

Running Splunk in FIPS mode does not alter indexed data in any way. You can copy indexes between FIPS and non-FIPS indexers.

Troubleshoot FIPS

  • If you are in FIPS mode and your usual RSA encrypted private keys do not work, they might be incompatible with FIPS. To mitigate this issue, you can convert your Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) private key to PKCS#8 format to make them compatible.
  • After you install Splunk software without FIPS mode enabled, you cannot enable FIPS mode. If you require FIPS compliance, confirm that your initial Splunk installation is FIPS-enabled. To change to a version running FIPS mode, reinstall Splunk software and use the procedure in this topic to enable FIPS.
  • If you have problems running a Splunk app, confirm that it is certified to run in FIPS mode and does not have dependencies on cryptographic algorithms that FIPS disables (such as MD5 and RC4).
Last modified on 28 November, 2018
About TLS encryption and cipher suites   About default certificate authentication

This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk® Enterprise: 7.0.0, 7.0.1, 7.0.2, 7.0.3, 7.0.4, 7.0.5, 7.0.6, 7.0.7, 7.0.8, 7.0.9, 7.0.10, 7.0.11, 7.0.13, 7.1.0, 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 7.1.3, 7.1.4, 7.1.5, 7.1.6, 7.1.7, 7.1.8, 7.1.9, 7.1.10

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