Google Identity Access Metrics via Telegraf

Google Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a robust solution within Google Cloud that empowers organizations to manage user identities and control access to their cloud resources effectively. IAM is designed to provide secure and fine-grained access controls, allowing organizations to define roles, permissions, and policies to protect their data and infrastructure.

• Begin by heading over to the 'Project Selector' and select the specific project from which you wish to send metrics.
• Progress to the 'Service Account Details' screen. Here, assign a distinct name to your service account and opt for 'Create and Continue'.
• In the 'Grant This Service Account Access to Project' screen, ensure the following roles: 'Compute Viewer', 'Monitoring Viewer', and 'Cloud Asset Viewer'.
• Upon completion of the above, click 'Done'.
• Now find and select your project in the 'Service Accounts for Project' list.
• Move to the 'KEYS' section.
• Navigate through Keys > Add Key > Create New Key, and specify 'JSON' as the key type.
• Lastly, click on 'Create', and make sure to save your new key.

Now add the environment variable for the key

On the machine run:

export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=<your-gcp-key>

This integration allows you to configure a Telegraf agent to send your metrics, in multiple formats, to Logit.io.

Telegraf is a flexible server agent equipped with plug-in support, useful for sending metrics and events from data sources like web servers, APIs, application logs, and cloud services.

To ship your metrics to Logit.io, we will integrate the relevant input and outputs.http plug-in into your Telegraf configuration file.

Choose the install for your operating system below to get started:

Windows

wget https://dl.influxdata.com/telegraf/releases/telegraf-1.19.2_windows_amd64.zip

Download and extract to: C:\Program Files\Logitio\telegraf\

Configuration file: C:\Program Files\Logitio\telegraf\

MacOS

brew install telegraf

Configuration file x86_64 Intel: /usr/local/etc/telegraf.conf Configuration file ARM (Apple Silicon): /opt/homebrew/etc/telegraf.conf

Ubuntu/Debian

wget -q https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive_compat.key
echo '393e8779c89ac8d958f81f942f9ad7fb82a25e133faddaf92e15b16e6ac9ce4c influxdata-archive_compat.key' | sha256sum -c && cat influxdata-archive_compat.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/influxdata-archive_compat.gpg > /dev/null
echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/influxdata-archive_compat.gpg] https://repos.influxdata.com/debian stable main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdata.list

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install telegraf

Configuration file: /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf

RedHat and CentOS

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/influxdata.repo
[influxdata]
name = InfluxData Repository - Stable
baseurl = https://repos.influxdata.com/stable/\$basearch/main
enabled = 1
gpgcheck = 1
gpgkey = https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive_compat.key
EOF

sudo yum install telegraf

Configuration file: /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf

SLES & openSUSE

zypper ar -f obs://devel:languages:go/ go
zypper in telegraf

Configuration file: /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf

FreeBSD/PC-BSD

sudo pkg install telegraf

Configuration file: /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf

Read more about how to configure data scraping and configuration options for Telegraf

First you need to set up the input plug-in to enable Telegraf to scrape the GCP data from your hosts. This can be accomplished by incorporating the following code into your configuration file:

# Gather timeseries from Google Cloud Platform v3 monitoring API
[[inputs.stackdriver]]
  ## GCP Project
  project = "<your-project-name>"

  ## Include timeseries that start with the given metric type.
  metric_type_prefix_include = [
    "iam.googleapis.com",
  ]

  ## Most metrics are updated no more than once per minute; it is recommended
  ## to override the agent level interval with a value of 1m or greater.
  interval = "1m"

Read more about how to configure data scraping and configuration options for Stackdriver

Once you have generated the configuration file, you need to set up the output plug-in to allow Telegraf to transmit your data to Logit.io in Prometheus format. This can be accomplished by incorporating the following code into your configuration file:

[[outputs.http]]
  
  url = "https://<your-metrics-username>:<your-metrics-password>@<your-metrics-stack-id>-vm.logit.io:0/api/v1/write"
  data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"

  [outputs.http.headers]
    Content-Type = "application/x-protobuf"
    Content-Encoding = "snappy"

Windows

telegraf.exe --service start

MacOS

telegraf --config telegraf.conf

Linux

sudo service telegraf start

for systemd installations

systemctl start telegraf

Data should now have been sent to your Stack.

View my data

If you don't see metrics 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.

By leveraging Telegraf to monitor Google IAM metrics, organizations can gain valuable insights into access patterns, security policy changes, authentication attempts, and other critical security-related events. This data is essential for ensuring that only authorized users have access to sensitive information and systems, thereby reducing the risk of data breaches and other security incidents. Monitoring IAM metrics helps in detecting anomalous behavior, auditing access controls, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.

However, the complexity and volume of IAM-related data can pose significant challenges in terms of analysis and management. Logit.io addresses these challenges by offering a sophisticated platform that simplifies the ingestion, processing, visualization, and analysis of security metrics, including those from Google IAM.

With Logit.io, businesses can enhance their security analytics, enabling them to quickly identify and respond to potential security threats, optimize their access control policies, and ensure compliance with internal and external security standards. The platform's advanced analytics and monitoring capabilities support proactive security management, helping organizations to safeguard their critical assets in the cloud.

For those integrating Telegraf with Google IAM metrics and looking to elevate their security monitoring and analytics practices, Logit.io offers the necessary tools and expertise. Our platform provides a centralized solution for managing the complexities of security data, allowing you to derive actionable insights and maintain a robust security posture. Sending data to Logit.io from Google Identity Access Metrics is a streamlined and secure process that allows organizations to gain valuable insights into their identity and access management operations. By seamlessly integrating with Logit.io's powerful platform, you can efficiently monitor and analyze the performance of Google Identity Access Metrics in real time, ensuring your security and access control are always at their best. For deeper insights into cloud-native data management, look to our Google Firestore integration or our page on Google Apigee Metrics, Logit.io's GCP logging service is highly rated for its seamless integration capabilities.