KHIKA User Guide

File:Example.jpgUnder construction. The user guide to come here.

Accessing the KHIKA Gui

Login

In this section we assume that your VM is ready. You can login into the GUI using the Web Browser (Google Chrome) for further configuration of KHIKA. Note: KHIKA does not support any browser apart from Google Chrome.

Open the Google Chrome browser and enter IP address of KHIKA server. The URL is in the format : "https://IP_address_of_KHIKA_App_Server"

Note that the certificate for the web server is self-signed and hence the browse will warn you at this. You may ignore this warning and proceed.

Click Advanced to proceed to get below message

Following landing page for user login appears.

If you wish to install your own certificate, please perform below steps

• Login to the appliance using ‘khika’ user using your favourite ssh client
• cd /opt/KHIKA/kibana/config
• Open kibana.yml in ‘vi’ editor
• Locate section ‘server.ssl.enabled’. It looks like below

The default self-signed certificates are installed in following directory: /opt/KHIKA/3rdpartyUnix/Apache24/conf/

Note that KHIKA supports PEM-Format SSL certificates. Please refer to the documentation of your certificate vendor to convert your certificates into the PEM format, if they are in any other format.

• After you have the .crt (i.e. the certificate) and the .key (i.e. private key) files, copy them in /opt/KHIKA/3rdpartyUnix/Apache24/conf/ directory.
• Change the filenames (and directory paths if you have copied the certificate and key anywhere else) if required in kibana.yml file
• Make sure that the ‘server.ssl.certificate’ stanza points to the full path of the certificate and ‘server.ssl.key’ stanza points to the full path of the private keys.
• After editing and saving kibana.yml, come to the command prompt. Enter cd /opt/KHIKA and fire command “./khika_appserver.sh stop”
• Wait for some time (2 to 3 minutes)
• Fire command ‘./khika_appserver.sh start’ from /opt/KHIKA directory
• Connect using the fresh session of the browser
• Login using default credentials (i.e. username = admin, password = admin).

Change the password

After logging in for the first time (default user=admin and password=admin), it is recommended to change the password. Steps are mentioned below :

Select “Configure” screen from the left pane

Click on “Users” tab

Click on “Change Password” button

Type the desired password in “New Password” and “Confirm Password” fields. Click on “Change password”

Creating a User Group

You must be an “admin” user and a user in “admin group” for managing Users and User Groups. A User Group is like a team, in which you can add/remove team members (Users) and assign roles to them. One single User Group is mapped to a Workspace. We can decide which users are a part of this group, and hence can get access to the data in this Workspace. User groups are primarily created to restrict access to Workspaces, and thus data in them. Following are the steps to create a new User Group :

In the “Configure” screen, click on “User Groups” tab.

Click on “Create Group” button

Type say, “network_team” for Group Name field and click on “Add”

We have now successfully created a User Group. This can be mapped to a workspace. However, while creating a User Group itself, we can add Users to it as well. Creating Users, Creating User group, Creating Workspace and Mapping Workspace to User Group are dependent on each other.

Creating a Workspace

Workspace is a logical grouping of data sources clubbed together. Workspace consists of :

• Data Aggregator – the collector component from where the data is to be pulled.
• Adapters - data collection programs (or scripts) run by the Data Aggregator that convert the raw data to indexed normalised format.

A single Data Aggregator may have multiple Adapters under it. Only a user with “Admin” role can create a new Workspace. You may want to create multiple workspaces for separating data of multiple devices. When different user groups are assigned to each Workspace, each team has access to and can monitor its own separate devices and data. For example, if you have Linux and Windows servers you can make a separate workspace for Linux team and add Linux devices in it and a separate one for Windows workspace and add windows devices in it. Further if there are multiple locations like say Pune and Jamshedpur, you can create separate workspaces for Linux Pune and Linux Jamshedpur teams. Please Note : Multiple workspaces of a single location share one aggregator of that location. For creating a workspace, follow the steps as mentioned below :

In the “Configure” screen, select “Workspace” tab

Click on “Add Workspace” button

Enter name of the Workspace as “Firewall” in the Workspace Name field. This should be an alpha-numeric string without white spaces. Enter Data Retention (time-to-live) period in days as 30 or 60 days (depending on how long you want to retain the data).

Note on Data Retention in KHIKA: - KHIKA stores data on the local disk. The amount of data that KHIKA can store is only limited by the amount of disk you have. Data can be categorized into two types:

1. Raw/Log Data (raw messages converted into key-value pairs)
2. Report Data (i.e. the summarized data derived from the raw logs)

Select the User Group in which you want to add the Workspace from the Group drop-down list.

Click on the “Node” Tab. Select “localhost” as the node here and click on “Add”. Data size field – you can keep it as default value for now.

Creating a new User

Only users with “Admin” role can create new users. Steps are mentioned below : Go to “Users” tab on the “Configure” screen.

Click on “New User”

The following dialog box is displayed.

Following table lists the various fields in the New User dialog box. Enter information in the dialog box accordingly.

Fields	Description
User Name	Name assigned to the user. It should be at least eight characters long.
First Name	First name associated with the User.
Last Name	Last name associated with the User.
Email	Email ID associated with the User.
Password	Password unique to the user
Re-enter Password	Re-enter to confirm above password

Click on “Add” button in the bottom

• Assign appropriate role – “Admin” or “Staff” to the new user. Admin users can further create new users, create new alert rules etc. Staff users have read-only access to the system, that serves the purpose of monitoring without any modifications to the configuration.
• Go to “Users” tab on the “Configure” screen.

Click on “Set Role” button of the user for whom you want to assign the role. (In our case it is “user1”)

Select Admin/Staff option from the “Select Role” dropdown.

Click on “Save”

User is created successfully and the list of users can be seen in this tab, for any user management.

Add the new user to the User group. Click on “User Groups” tab

Select the group to which you want to add user in the group dropdown. (In our case it is “network_team”)

Click on “Add User” button.

Select the user you wish to add to user group in “Select Users” dropdown. In our case it is “business_user”

Click on “Add” button.

Our new user “business_user” is now added to the group “network_team”.

Access Control

Let us try to understand a bit more about users, user groups and access control. A ‘KHIKA’ user can have access to one or more workspaces. Before creating workspaces, it is important to think which users will have access to which workspaces. Perform following steps to provide controlled access to individual users in ‘KHIKA’

• Design your workspaces with a clear view and understanding of the data
• You must know who is going to need access to the data and the level of access required
• As a thumb rule, you must create a separate workspace for the data that needs restricted access. (Example:- If you don’t want your Server team to have access to your Firewall data, create a separate workspace for your Firewall data)
• Create different “User Groups”, one per “Workspace”
• While creating the Workspace, carefully assign it to an appropriate “User Group”
• Create Users and assign them to one or more “user Group/s” depending on the access requirements.

Getting Data into KHIKA

On completing the configuration steps from previous sections, we are ready to take in data from various devices into KHIKA. Network devices like Firewalls, Routers/Switches, Web proxies etc use Syslog protocol most of the times to forward the data to the KHIKA Aggregator. Linux and Windows Servers use OSSEC Agents and it’s Integration with KHIKA to forward the data. Integrating a device into KHIKA can be done in either of the ways and involves some basic steps :  Pointing the device to be monitored to KHIKA data collector. This can be in different ways (explained separately in sections below for syslog and ossec)

 On the KHIKA end, making the device entry at the adaptor level. For this step, on the KHIKA end, there are two ways of configuring the adaptor. o Install an Application – This is the most recommended method to configure. KHIKA ships some standard applications and it is explained in the next section how to install an Application. This step includes adaptor configuration and adaptors don’t have to be added separately if you have installed relevant application

By Installing an application, you not only get an adaptor configured but also the relevant reports, dashboards and real time critical correlation alerts for this data source are configured in just a single click – by just installing the application.

o Configure an adaptor in the right workspace, within the KHIKA data collector. This step is required only when you have not installed an application. For example, in case of any specific web application logs in your organisation etc.

Data Flow and Components in KHIKA

Data is sent from the end node or data source to KHIKA data collector or Aggregator node locally within its network. Inside the Aggregator there are Adaptors, one for each data type. Each Adaptor receives data, parses and normalises it to KHIKA proprietary data format. This is sent to KHIKA application server where it is acted upon by the correlation engine, indexer and storage. This data is stored in the workspace meant for this data type or access. KHIKA creates output in the form of Reports and Dashboards, real time Alerts and Search. Following is a diagram for the same.

data1

There can be multiple aggregator nodes collecting data from different locations and transferring data to a single KHIKA App server. When we install an Application, as explained in the following section, the relevant adaptor is configured inside the correct aggregator, and the relevant alerts and reports are configured. There are different inbuilt applications each for standard data sources. When we do not install an application, we have to add the relevant adaptor for that data type into its aggregator node. This step has to be done while the correct workspace is selected. Workspace contains an Aggregator and an Adaptor. A KHIKA user can have access to one or more workspaces. Before creating workspaces, it is important to think which users will have access to which workspaces. Design your workspaces with a clear view and understanding of the data. As a thumb rule, you must create a separate workspace for the data that needs restricted access. (Example:- If you don’t want your IT team to have access to your HR data, create a separate workspace for your HR data). Create different “User Groups”, one per “Workspace”. While creating the Workspace, carefully assign it to an appropriate “User Group”. Create Users and assign them to one or more “user Group/s” depending on the access requirements.

KHIKA Apps

Go to the Load a KHIKA App section for more.