Fortigate Firewall

Ship ESET logs to Logstash

Configure a Fortigate firewall to ship logs via Filebeat to your Logit.io stacks via Logstash.

Install Integration

Please click on the Install Integration button to configure your stack for this source.

Install Filebeat

To get started you will need to install filebeat. To do this you have two main options:

Choose the filebeat (opens in a new tab) ZIP file (Windows ZIP x86_64) or
Choose the Microsoft Software Installer MSI (opens in a new tab) file (Windows MSI x86_64 (beta))

To successfully install filebeat and set up the required Windows service you will need to have administrator access.

If you have chosen to download the zip file:

Extract the contents of the zip file into C:\Program Files.
Rename the extracted folder to filebeat
Open a PowerShell prompt as an Administrator (right-click the PowerShell icon and select Run As Administrator).
From the PowerShell prompt, run the following commands to install filebeat as a Windows service:

cd 'C:\Program Files\filebeat'

.\install-service-filebeat.ps1

If script execution is disabled on your system, you need to set the execution policy for the current session to allow the script to run. For example:

PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy UnRestricted -File .\install-service-filebeat.ps1

For more information about Powershell execution policies see here (opens in a new tab).

If you have chosen to download the filebeat.msi file:

double-click on it and the relevant files will be downloaded.

At the end of the installation process you'll be given the option to open the folder where filebeat has been installed.

Open a PowerShell prompt as an Administrator (right-click the PowerShell icon and select Run As Administrator).
From the PowerShell prompt, change directory to the location where filebeat was installed and run the following command to install filebeat as a Windows service:

.\install-service-filebeat.ps1

If script execution is disabled on your system, you need to set the execution policy for the current session to allow the script to run. For example:

PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy UnRestricted -File .\install-service-filebeat.ps1

For more information about Powershell execution policies see here (opens in a new tab).

Configure Fortigate Logging

Configure the Fortigate firewall to log to a syslog server:

You can configure the Fortigate firewall to log to a syslog server through the web interface or through the CLI. To configure through the web interface, go to "System" -> "Log & Report" -> "Syslog".

From there, you can add a new syslog server and specify the IP address or hostname of the machine running Filebeat.

Log format: syslog
Send over: UDP
IP Address: Your Filebeat server IP address
Port: 514

To configure through the CLI, run the following commands:

config log syslogd setting
set status enable
set format default
set server <Filebeat_machine_IP_Address>
set port 514
end

Configure Filebeat.yml

The configuration file below is pre-configured to send data to your Logit.io Stack.

Copy the configuration file below and overwrite the contents of the Filebeat configuration file typically located at /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml

# ============================== Filebeat inputs ===============================
filebeat.inputs:
 
- type: udp
    max_message_size: 10MiB
    host: "0.0.0.0:514"
    enabled: true
 
    fields:
        type: fortigate
    fields_under_root: true
    encoding: utf-8
    ignore_older: 12h
 
# ================================== Outputs ===================================
output.logstash:
    hosts: ["@logstash.host:@logstash.sslPort"]
    loadbalance: true
    ssl.enabled: true

If you're running Filebeat 7, add this code block to the end. Otherwise, you can leave it out.

# ... For Filebeat 7 only ...
filebeat.registry.path: /var/lib/filebeat

If you're running Filebeat 6, add this code block to the end.

# ... For Filebeat 6 only ...
registry_file: /var/lib/filebeat/registry

It's a good idea to run the configuration file through a YAML validator to rule out indentation errors, clean up extra characters, and check if your YAML file is valid. Yamllint.com (opens in a new tab) is a great choice.

Validate configuration

cd <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>
.\@beatname.exe -e -c @beatname.yml

If the yml file is invalid, will print an error loading config file error message with details on how to correct the problem. If you have issues starting see "How To Diagnose No Data In Stack" below to troubleshoot.

Start filebeat

To start Filebeat, run in Powershell:

Start-Service filebeat

Launch Logit.io to view your logs

Data should now have been sent to your Stack.

View My Data

If you don't see take a look at How to diagnose no data in Stack below for how to diagnose common issues.

How to diagnose no data in Stack

If you don't see data appearing in your Stack after following the steps, visit the Help Centre guide for steps to diagnose no data appearing in your Stack or Chat to support now.

Fortigate Overview

FortiGate firewalls provide advanced network security features for enterprise environments, protecting against cyber threats and unauthorized access. To effectively monitor and analyze network activity, it is essential to have a reliable and efficient log management solution. Filebeat, a popular open-source shipping tool, is widely used to send logs from FortiGate firewalls to various destinations, including Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana, due to its reliability and minimal memory footprint.

Filebeat, which is written in Go, combines key features from Logstash-Forwarder and Lumberjack to generate, parse, tail, and forward common logs within the logging pipeline to be indexed within Elasticsearch. Filebeat is the most popular way to send logs to ELK, out of the entire collection of open-source shipping tools, including Auditbeat, Metricbeat, and Heartbeat. Earlier versions of Filebeat only allowed users to send events to Logstash and Elasticsearch, but recent updates to the shipper have made it compatible with Redis & Kafka.

Sending logs from FortiGate firewalls to Filebeat is a simple process that involves configuring the firewall to forward logs to a syslog server. Once the logs are received by the syslog server, Filebeat can be used to collect and forward log data to Elasticsearch or other destinations.

Filebeat provides a filebeat.yml wizard that helps users avoid complex logging concerns, such as large registry files and frequent errors encountered when handling deleted or renamed log files. Users can also consider our Hosted ELK service to simplify tracking numerous pipelines using this shipper.

In summary, Filebeat is an essential tool for efficiently managing log data from FortiGate firewalls. Its reliability, minimal memory footprint, and compatibility with various destinations make it a popular choice for many organizations. To ensure effective log management and analysis, users should consider configuring FortiGate firewalls to forward logs to Filebeat and taking advantage of the shipper's advanced features.

If you need any further assistance with migrating your log data to ELK we're here to help you get started. Feel free to get in contact with our support team by sending us a message via live chat & we'll be happy to assist.

ESET Juniper SRX