Activate the FTP Collector - Administrator Guide - Cortex XDR - Cortex - Security Operations

Select Settings → Configurations → Data Broker → Broker VMs.

In either the Brokers tab or the Clusters tab, locate your Broker VM.

You can either right-click the Broker VM and select Add App → FTP Collector, or hover in the APPS column, and select Add → FTP Collector.

Configure the FTP Connection settings.

1. Configure the FTP Connection settings.

   • Type—Select the type of FTP connection as FTP, SFTP, or FTPS.

   • Host—Specify the hostname, IP address, or FQDN of the FTP server. When configuring a FTPS Collector, you must specify the FQDN.

   • Port—Specify the FTP port number.

   • Username—Specify the username to login to the FTP server.

   • Password—Specify the password to login to the FTP server.

   • SSH Key-Based Authentication—This checkbox is only displayed when setting a SFTP Collector, which works with both Username and Password authentication or SSH Key-Based Authentication. You can either leave this checkbox clear and set a Username and Password (default) or select SSH Key-Based Authentication to Browse to a Private Key. When this connection is established with a server using a Self-signed certificate, you must upload it first to the Broker VM as a Trusted CA Certificate.

     Note

     When configuring an SFTP connection, Cortex XDR expects the private key to be in the RSA format that is included in the -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----- tag. Cortex XDR does not support providing the private key in the OpenSSH format from the -----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY----- tag.

     When using ssh-keygen using a Mac, you get the OpenSSH format by default. The command for getting the RSA format is:

     ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C <email address> -m PEM

   • Folder Path—Specify the path to the folder on the FTP site where the files are located that you want to collect.

   • Recursive—Select this checkbox to configure the FTP Collector applet to recursively examine any subfolders for new files as long as the folders are readable. This is not configured by default.

   • Test Connection—Select to validate the FTP connection.

2. Configure the FTP Settings.

   • Collect Every—Specify the execution frequency of collection by designating a number and then selecting the unit as either Minutes, Hours, or Days.

   • After Files Uploaded—Select what to do with the files after they are uploaded to the Cortex XDR server. You can either select Rename files with a suffix (default) and then you must specify the Suffix or Delete files. When adding a suffix, the suffix is added at the end of the original file name using the format <file name>.<suffix>, which becomes the new name of the file.

   • Include—Specify the files and folders that must match to be monitored by Cortex XDR . Multiple values are allowed with commas separating the values.

     Allowed wildcard:

     • '?' matches a single alphabet character in a specific position.

     • '*' matches any character or set of characters, including no character.

     Example: log*.json includes any JSON file starting with 'log'.

   • Exclude—(Optional) Specify the files and folders that must match to not be monitored by Cortex XDR . Multiple values are allowed with commas separating the values.

     Allowed wildcard:

     • '?' matches a single alphabet character in a specific position.

     • '*' matches any character or set of characters, including no character.

     Example: *.backup excludes any file ending with '.backup'.

   • Log Format—Select the Log Format from the list as either Raw (default), JSON, CSV, TSV, PSV, CEF, LEEF, Corelight, or Cisco, which indicates to Cortex XDR how to parse the data in the file. This setting defines the parser used to parse all the processed files as defined in the Include and Exclude fields, regardless of the file names and extension. For example, if the Include field is set * and the Log Format is JSON, all files (even those named file.log) in the specified folder are processed by the FTP Collector as JSON, and any entry that does not comply with the JSON format are dropped.

     Note

     When uploading JSON files, Cortex XDR only parses the first level of nesting and only supports single line JSON format, such that every new line means a separate entry.

   • # of Lines to Skip—(Optional) Specify the number of lines to skip at the beginning of the file. This is set to 0 by default.

3. Configure the Data Source Mapping.

   Vendor and Product—Specify the Vendor and Product for the type of data being collected. The vendor and product are used to define the name of your Cortex Query Language (XQL) dataset (<Vendor>_<Product>_raw).

   Note

   • The Vendor and Product defaults to Auto-Detect when the Log Format is set to CEF or LEEF.

4. Generate Preview.

   Select Generate Preview to display up to 10 rows from the first file and Preview the results. The Preview works based on the FTP Collector settings, which means that if all the files that were configured to be monitored were already processed, then the Preview returns no records.

(Optional) Add Connection to define another FTP connection for collecting logs from files and folders via FTP, FTPS, or SFTP.

(Optional) Other available options.

As needed, you can return to your FTP Collector settings to manage your connections. Here are the actions available to you.

Activate the FTP Collector applet.

After a successful activation, the APPS field displays FTP with a green dot indicating a successful connection.

(Optional) To view metrics about the FTP Collector, hover over the FTP connection in the APPS field for your Broker VM.

Cortex XDR displays Resources, including the amount of CPU, Memory, and Disk space the applet is using.

Manage the FTP Collector.

After you activate the FTP Collector, you can make additional changes as needed. To modify a configuration, hover over the FTP connection in the APPS column to display the FTP Collector settings, and select:

You can also Ingest FTP Files as Datasets.