Fortigate Firewall

To get started first follow the steps below:

• Install
• Root access
• Verify the required port is open

Older versions can be found here 7, 6, 5

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

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: 
  fields_under_root: true
  encoding: utf-8
  ignore_older: 12h

# ================================== Outputs ===================================
output.logstash:
    hosts: ["your-logstash-host:your-ssl-port"]
    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 is a great choice.

If you have issues starting in the next step, you can use these commands below to troubleshoot.

Let's check the configuration file is syntactically correct by running directly inside the terminal. If the file is invalid, will print an error loading config file error message with details on how to correct the problem.

deb/rpm

sudo  -e -c /etc//.yml

macOS

cd <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>
sudo ./ -e -c .yml

Windows

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

Start or restart to apply the configuration changes.

Now you should view your logs:

Launch Dashboard

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

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 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.