PCI Compliance for Windows JSON - OpenTelemetry

The PCI Compliance for Windows JSON - OpenTelemetry is a log app that sends Windows log data to Sumo Logic via OpenTelemetry windows event log receiver. The app's preconfigured dashboards help you to monitor system, account, and user activity to ensure that login activity and privileged users are within the expected ranges.

info

The PCI Compliance for Windows JSON app covers PCI requirements 02, 06, 08, and 10.

Fields created in Sumo Logic for PCI Compliance Windows JSON App

Following tags will be created as part of PCI Compliance Windows JSON app installation, if not already present.

• sumo.datasource: has the fixed value of windows.
• host.group: user configured tag which signifies a group of hosts for the operating system.
• deployment.environment: user configured tag which identifies the environment where the windows system resides. For example: dev, prod or qa.

Log types

The Windows App assumes events are coming from Windows Event Log receiver in JSON format. It does not work with third party logs.

Standard Windows event channels include:

• Security
• System

Collection configuration and app installation

note

You can skip this section if you have already set up the logs collection through Windows, Windows - Cloud Security Monitoring and Analytics, or Active Directory app installation. Additional collection is not required as the logs used by this app are already ingested into Sumo Logic.

Follow these steps to set up and deploy the source template to collect data in Sumo Logic from a remotely managed OpenTelemetry collector.

Step 1: Set up remotely managed OpenTelemetry collector

note

If you want to configure your source locally, you can do so by downloading the YAML file. For details, see Configure OpenTelemetry collectors locally.

In this step, we'll install remotely managed OpenTelemetry collector and add a uniquely identifiable tag to these collectors.

1. Classic UI. In the main Sumo Logic menu, Select App Catalog.
   New UI. In the Sumo Logic main menu select App Catalog.
2. In the 🔎 Search Apps field, run a search for your desired OpenTelemetry app, then select it. For example, Apache - OpenTelemetry.
3. Click the Manage dropdown and then select Add Collection.
4. On the Set Up Collector page, select Add a New Collector and then click Next.

note

If you want to use an existing OpenTelemetry Collector, you can skip this step by selecting the Use an existing Collector option.

5. Select the platform where you want to install the Sumo Logic OpenTelemetry Collector. For example, Linux.
   This will generate a command that you can execute in the machine environment you need to monitor. Once executed, it will install the Sumo Logic OpenTelemetry Collector.
   The installation commands now include a --remotely-managed flag. When this flag is used, a remotely managed collector is installed automatically instead of a locally managed one. If you prefer to use a locally managed collector, simply remove the flag from the installation command.

Step 2: Configure the source template

In this step, you will configure the YAML required for Windows collection. Below are the inputs required for configuration:

• Name. Name of the source template.
• Description. Description for the source template.

Logs collection

• Fields/Metadata. You can provide any customer fields to be tagged with the data collected. By default, Sumo Logic tags _sourceCategory with the value otel/windows.
• Windows Event. In this section you can select choose among the most widely used Windows event channel for which Windows event log collection will be enabled. You can also provide Custom Event Channels providing any customer event channel for which event logs are to be collected.
• Forward to SIEM. Check the checkbox to forward your data to Cloud SIEM.

Metrics collection

• Metrics. Select the metric scrappers you want to enable. By default, metric collection for CPU, memory, disk, load, file system, network and paging are enabled, and process metric collection is disabled.

Enable process metric collection (optional)

By default, the collector will not send process metrics to Sumo Logic. This is because the number of processes running on a host can be very large, which would result in a significant increase in Data Points per Minute (DPM).

Click the Enable process metric collection checkbox to collect process-level metrics.

• Name of process. Add the list of process names.
• Include/Exclude the above pattern. Signifies if you want to exclude or include the metrics for the processes listed previously.
• Match type for process name. Select if the process name given should be considered for a strict match with the host machine processes or if it should be considered as regex when matching.
  

note

If you need to edit the process list in the future, you can do this manually in the OTEL config yaml by adding or removing in the names list under process scrapper.

process:
  include:
    names: [ <process name1>, <process name2> ... ]
    match_type: <strict|regexp>

• Scan Interval. The frequency at which the source is scanned.
• Processing Rules. You can add processing rules for logs/metrics collected. To learn more, refer to Processing Rules. For masking windows event logs, refer to Mask Rules for Windows Source Template.

Step 3: Push the source template to the desired remotely managed collectors

info

A new source template will always be created with the latest version of the source template.

Follow the below steps to create a data collection configuration to gather the required logs and link them to all the collectors with the help of collector tags.

1. Complete the source template form with the name and file path for your logs (for example, error logs or access logs), then click Next.
2. Under Link Collectors, you will have the option to link the collectors using the collector name or by adding tags to find the group of collectors (for example, application = Apache).
   
3. Preview and confirm the collectors that will be linked (fetched automatically) to the newly created source template.
   
   
4. Click Next to complete the source template creation. In the background, the system will apply the configuration to all the linked collectors and will start collecting the respective telemetry data from the remote host (in the example, it would start collecting Apache error logs).
5. Click the Log Search or Metrics Search icons to search for and analyze your data collected for this source template.

Sample queries

This sample log query is from the Windows - PCI Req 02, 08, 10 - Account, User, System Monitoring dashboard > User Account Created panel.

Log Query String

sumo.datasource=windows deployment.environment={{deployment.environment}} host.group={{host.group}} "\"channel\":\"Security\"" 4720
| json "event_id.id", "computer", "message", "event_data.SubjectUserName",  "event_data.SubjectDomainName", "event_data.TargetUserName", "event_data.TargetDomainName" as event_id, host, msg_summary, src_user, src_domain, dest_user, dest_domain nodrop
| if(isBlank(src_user), "Unknown", src_user) as src_user
| if(isBlank(src_domain), "Unknown", src_domain) as src_domain
| if(isBlank(dest_user), "Unknown", dest_user) as dest_user
| if(isBlank(dest_domain), "Unknown", dest_domain) as dest_domain
| where event_id = "4720" and host matches "{{host.name}}" and _collector matches "{{collector}}" and _sourceHost matches "{{sourcehost}}" and src_user matches "{{src_user}}" and src_domain matches "{{src_domain}}" and dest_user matches "{{dest_user}}" and dest_domain matches "{{dest_domain}}"
| fields host, dest_user, dest_domain, src_user, src_domain, event_id, msg_summary
| timeslice 1s
| count as event_count by _timeslice, host, dest_user, dest_domain, src_user, src_domain, event_id, msg_summary
| sort by _timeslice

Sample log messages

{
  "record_id":161812,
  "channel":"Security",
  "event_data":{
    "WorkstationName":"-",
    "TargetDomainName":"",
    "SubjectUserSid":"S-1-0-0",
    "LogonProcessName":"NtLmSsp ",
    "TargetUserName":"ADMINISTRATOR",
    "TargetUserSid":"S-1-0-0",
    "IpAddress":"3.137.149.192",
    "ProcessId":"0x0",
    "KeyLength":"0",
    "ProcessName":"-",
    "SubjectUserName":"-",
    "LogonType":"3",
    "TransmittedServices":"-",
    "FailureReason":"%%2313",
    "SubjectLogonId":"0x0",
    "IpPort":"0",
    "AuthenticationPackageName":"NTLM",
    "Status":"0xc000006d",
    "LmPackageName":"-",
    "SubStatus":"0xc000006a",
    "SubjectDomainName":"-"
  },
  "task":"Logon",
  "provider":{
    "name":"Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing",
    "guid":"{54849625-5478-4994-a5ba-3e3b0328c30d}",
    "event_source":""
  },
  "system_time":"2023-07-11T14:14:51.1731050Z",
  "computer":"EC2AMAZ-V57A85N",
  "opcode":"Info",
  "keywords":[
    "Audit Failure"
  ],
  "details":{
    "Account For Which Logon Failed":{
      "Security ID":"S-1-0-0",
      "Account Name":"ADMINISTRATOR",
      "Account Domain":"-"
    },
    "Network Information":{
      "Workstation Name":"-",
      "Source Network Address":"3.137.149.192",
      "Source Port":"0"
    },
    "Failure Information":{
      "Failure Reason":"Unknown user name or bad password.",
      "Status":"0xC000006D",
      "Sub Status":"0xC000006A"
    },
    "Detailed Authentication Information":{
      "Transited Services":"-",
      "Key Length":"0",
      "Logon Process":"NtLmSsp",
      "Authentication Package":"NTLM",
      "Package Name (NTLM only)":"-"
    },
    "Subject":{
      "Security ID":"S-1-0-0",
      "Account Name":"-",
      "Account Domain":"-",
      "Logon ID":"0x0"
    },
    "Process Information":{
      "Caller Process ID":"0x0",
      "Caller Process Name":"-"
    },
    "Logon Type":"3",
    "Additional Context":[
      "This event is generated when a logon request fails. It is generated on the computer where access was attempted.",
      "The Subject fields indicate the account on the local system which requested the logon. This is most commonly a service such as the Server service, or a local process such as Winlogon.exe or Services.exe.",
      "The Logon Type field indicates the kind of logon that was requested. The most common types are 2 (interactive) and 3 (network).",
      "The Process Information fields indicate which account and process on the system requested the logon.",
      "The Network Information fields indicate where a remote logon request originated. Workstation name is not always available and may be left blank in some cases.",
      "The authentication information fields provide detailed information about this specific logon request.",
      "- Transited services indicate which intermediate services have participated in this logon request.",
      "- Package name indicates which sub-protocol was used among the NTLM protocols.",
      "- Key length indicates the length of the generated session key. This will be 0 if no session key was requested."
    ]
  },
  "message":"An account failed to log on.",
  "event_id":{
    "qualifiers":0,
    "id":4625
  },
  "level":"Information"
}

Viewing Windows Event Log-Based Dashboards

Windows - PCI Req 02, 08, 10 - Account, User, System Monitoring

Track your user accounts and recent system changes.

Windows - PCI Req 02, 10 - Login Activity

Track login successes and failures.

Windows - PCI Req 08 - Other User Activity

Track user activities such as password changes, password resets, excessive failed access attempts, unlocked accounts, and changed accounts.

Windows - PCI Req 06 - Windows Updates Activity

Track your Windows Update activities.

Create monitors for PCI Compliance For Windows JSON app

From your App Catalog:

1. From the Sumo Logic navigation, select App Catalog.
2. In the Search Apps field, search for and then select your app.
3. Make sure the app is installed.
4. Navigate to What's Included tab and scroll down to the Monitors section.
5. Click Create next to the pre-configured monitors. In the create monitors window, adjust the trigger conditions and notifications settings based on your requirements.
6. Scroll down to Monitor Details.
7. Under Location click on New Folder.
   note

   By default, monitor will be saved in the root folder. So to make the maintenance easier, create a new folder in the location of your choice.

8. Enter Folder Name. Folder Description is optional.
   tip

   Using app version in the folder name will be helpful to determine the versioning for future updates.

9. Click Create. Once the folder is created, click on Save.

PCI Compliance For Windows JSON alerts

Name	Description	Alert Condition	Recover Condition
Windows PCI - Critical Policy Changes	This alert is triggered when modifications to security policies or audit policies are detected, indicating potential changes to the system's security posture. It supports PCI DSS Requirements 10.2.2 (track changes to system-level objects) and 10.2.5.b (track use of identification and authentication mechanisms).	Count >= 1	Count < 1
Windows PCI - Excessive Failed Login Attempts	This alert is triggered when there are multiple authentication failures detected across Windows environments. These are monitored across different authentication mechanisms like local Windows authentication, Kerberos, and network logons. It correlates failure patterns with specific error codes to identify potential security threats such as password guessing, account enumeration, or attempts to access disabled accounts. This helps security teams differentiate between benign issues and malicious activities.	Count >= 5	Count < 5
Windows PCI - Failed Windows Updates	This alert is triggered when Windows update failures are detected, which could leave systems vulnerable to known exploits. It aligns with PCI DSS Requirement 6.2.0 for installing critical security patches within one month of release.	Count > = 3	Count < 3
Windows PCI - Security Audit Log Tampering	This alert is triggered when attempt is detected to clear or tamper with Windows security audit logs, indicating potential attempts to hide malicious activities. It supports PCI DSS Requirements 10.2.0 (implement automated audit trails) and 10.3.0 (record audit trail entries).	Count > = 1	Count < 1
Windows PCI - User Account State Change	This alert is triggered when critical user account state changes are detected, including account creation, deletion, enablement, and disablement. This supports PCI DSS Requirement 8.1.3 for immediately revoking access for terminated users.	Count > = 1	Count < 1