Edit

Configure automatic log upload using on-premises Docker on Linux

  • Article
  • 7 minutes to read

Note

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (previously known as Microsoft Cloud App Security) is now part of Microsoft 365 Defender. The Microsoft 365 Defender portal allows security admins to perform their security tasks in one location. This will simplify workflows, and add the functionality of the other Microsoft 365 Defender services. Microsoft 365 Defender will be the home for monitoring and managing security across your Microsoft identities, data, devices, apps, and infrastructure. For more information about these changes, see Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps in Microsoft 365 Defender.

You can configure automatic log upload for continuous reports in Defender for Cloud Apps using a Docker on an on-premises Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), or CentOS server.

Prerequisites

  • OS:

    • Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 18.04 and 20.04
    • RHEL 7.2 or higher
    • CentOS 7.2 or higher

  • Disk space: 250 GB

  • CPU cores: 2

  • CPU Architecture: Intel® 64 and AMD 64

  • RAM: 4 GB

  • Set your firewall as described in Network requirements

Note

If you have an existing log collector and want to remove it before deploying it again, or if you simply want to remove it, run the following commands:

docker stop <collector_name>
docker rm <collector_name>

Log collector performance

The Log collector can successfully handle log capacity of up to 50 GB per hour. The main bottlenecks in the log collection process are:

  • Network bandwidth - Your network bandwidth determines the log upload speed.

  • I/O performance of the virtual machine - Determines the speed at which logs are written to the log collector's disk. The log collector has a built-in safety mechanism that monitors the rate at which logs arrive and compares it to the upload rate. In cases of congestion, the log collector starts to drop log files. If your setup typically exceeds 50 GB per hour, it's recommended that you split the traffic between multiple log collectors.

Set up and configuration

Step 1 – Web portal configuration: Define data sources and link them to a log collector

  1. Go to the Automatic log upload settings page.

    1. In the Defender for Cloud Apps portal, click the settings icon followed by Log collectors.

    settings icon.

  2. For each firewall or proxy from which you want to upload logs, create a matching data source.

    1. Click Add data source.
      Add a data source.
    2. Name your proxy or firewall.
      Name for your data source.
    3. Select the appliance from the Source list. If you select Custom log format to work with a network appliance that isn't listed, see Working with the custom log parser for configuration instructions.
    4. Compare your log with the sample of the expected log format. If your log file format doesn't match this sample, you should add your data source as Other.
    5. Set the Receiver type to either FTP, FTPS, Syslog – UDP, or Syslog – TCP, or Syslog – TLS.

    Note

    Integrating with secure transfer protocols (FTPS and Syslog – TLS) often requires additional settings or your firewall/proxy.

    f. Repeat this process for each firewall and proxy whose logs can be used to detect traffic on your network. It's recommended to set up a dedicated data source per network device to enable you to:

    • Monitor the status of each device separately, for investigation purposes.
    • Explore Shadow IT Discovery per device, if each device is used by a different user segment.

  3. Go to the Log collectors tab at the top.

    1. Click Add log collector.
    2. Give the log collector a name.
    3. Enter the Host IP address (private IP address) of the machine you'll use to deploy the Docker. The host IP address can be replaced with the machine name, if there is a DNS server (or equivalent) that will resolve the host name.
    4. Select all Data sources that you want to connect to the collector, and click Update to save the configuration.

    Select data sources to connect.

  4. Further deployment information will appear. Copy the run command from the dialog. You can use the copy to clipboard icon. copy to clipboard icon.

  5. Export the expected data source configuration. This configuration describes how you should set the log export in your appliances.

    Create log collector.

    Note

    • A single Log collector can handle multiple data sources.
    • Copy the contents of the screen because you will need the information when you configure the Log Collector to communicate with Defender for Cloud Apps. If you selected Syslog, this information will include information about which port the Syslog listener is listening on.
    • For users sending log data via FTP for the first time, we recommend changing the password for the FTP user. For more information, see Changing the FTP password.

Step 2 – On-premises deployment of your machine

The following steps describe the deployment in Ubuntu.

Note

The deployment steps for other supported platforms may be slightly different.

  1. Open a terminal on your Ubuntu machine.

  2. Change to root privileges using the command: sudo -i

  3. To bypass a proxy in your network, run the following two commands:

    export http_proxy='<IP>:<PORT>' (e.g. 168.192.1.1:8888)
export https_proxy='<IP>:<PORT>'

  4. If you accept the software license terms, uninstall old versions and install Docker CE by running the commands appropriate for your environment:

  1. Remove old versions of Docker: yum erase docker docker-engine docker.io

  2. Install Docker engine prerequisites: yum install -y yum-utils

  3. Add Docker repository:

    yum-config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo
yum makecache

  4. Install Docker engine: yum -y install docker-ce

  5. Start Docker

    systemctl start docker
systemctl enable docker

  6. Test Docker installation: docker run hello-world

  1. Deploy the collector image on the hosting machine by importing the collector configuration. Import the configuration by copying the run command generated in the portal. If you need to configure a proxy, add the proxy IP address and port number. For example, if your proxy details are 192.168.10.1:8080, your updated run command is:

    (echo 6f19225ea69cf5f178139551986d3d797c92a5a43bef46469fcc997aec2ccc6f) | docker run --name MyLogCollector -p 21:21 -p 20000-20099:20000-20099 -e "PUBLICIP='192.2.2.2'" -e "PROXY=192.168.10.1:8080" -e "CONSOLE=tenant2.eu1-rs.adallom.com" -e "COLLECTOR=MyLogCollector" --security-opt apparmor:unconfined --cap-add=SYS_ADMIN --restart unless-stopped -a stdin -i mcr.microsoft.com/mcas/logcollector starter

    Create log collector.

  2. Verify that the collector is running properly with the following command: docker logs <collector_name>

You should see the message: Finished successfully! Command to verify that docker is running properly.

Step 3 - On-premises configuration of your network appliances

Configure your network firewalls and proxies to periodically export logs to the dedicated Syslog port or the FTP directory according to the directions in the dialog. For example:

BlueCoat_HQ - Destination path: \<<machine_name>>\BlueCoat_HQ\

Step 4 - Verify the successful deployment in the Defender for Cloud Apps portal

Check the collector status in the Log collector table and make sure the status is Connected. If it's Created, it's possible the log collector connection and parsing haven't completed.

Verify successful deployment of log collector.

You can also go to the Governance log and verify that logs are being periodically uploaded to the portal.

Alternatively, you can check the log collector status from within the docker container using the following commands:

  1. Log in to the container by using this command: docker exec -it <Container Name> bash
  2. Verify the log collector status using this command: collector_status -p

If you have problems during deployment, see Troubleshooting Cloud Discovery.

Optional - Create custom continuous reports

Verify that the logs are being uploaded to Defender for Cloud Apps and that reports are generated. After verification, create custom reports. You can create custom discovery reports based on Azure Active Directory user groups. For example, if you want to see the cloud use of your marketing department, import the marketing group using the import user group feature. Then create a custom report for this group. You can also customize a report based on IP address tag or IP address ranges.

  1. In the Defender for Cloud Apps portal, under the Settings cog, select Cloud Discovery settings, and then select Continuous reports.

  2. Click the Create report button and fill in the fields.

  3. Under the Filters you can filter the data by data source, by imported user group, or by IP address tags and ranges.

    Note

    When applying filters on continuous reports, the selection will be included, not excluded. For example, if you apply a filter on a certain user group, only that user group will be included in the report.

    Custom continuous report.

Next steps

Modify the log collector FTP configuration

If you run into any problems, we're here to help. To get assistance or support for your product issue, please open a support ticket.