Alerting and action settings in Kibana

xpack.encryptedSavedObjects .encryptionKey

A string of 32 or more characters used to encrypt sensitive properties on alerting rules and actions before they’re stored in Elasticsearch. Third party credentials — such as the username and password used to connect to an SMTP service — are an example of encrypted properties.

Kibana offers a CLI tool to help generate this encryption key.

If not set, Kibana will generate a random key on startup, but all alerting and action functions will be blocked. Generated keys are not allowed for alerting and actions because when a new key is generated on restart, existing encrypted data becomes inaccessible. For the same reason, alerting and actions in high-availability deployments of Kibana will behave unexpectedly if the key isn’t the same on all instances of Kibana.

Although the key can be specified in clear text in kibana.yml, it’s recommended to store this key securely in the Kibana Keystore. Be sure to back up the encryption key value somewhere safe, as your alerting rules and actions will cease to function due to decryption failures should you lose it. If you want to rotate the encryption key, be sure to follow the instructions on encryption key rotation.

xpack.actions.enabled

Feature toggle that enables Actions in Kibana. If false, all features dependent on Actions are disabled, including the Observability and Security apps. Defaults to true.

xpack.actions.allowedHosts

A list of hostnames that Kibana is allowed to connect to when built-in actions are triggered. It defaults to [*], allowing any host, but keep in mind the potential for SSRF attacks when hosts are not explicitly added to the allowed hosts. An empty list [] can be used to block built-in actions from making any external connections.

Note that hosts associated with built-in actions, such as Slack and PagerDuty, are not automatically added to allowed hosts. If you are not using the default [*] setting, you must ensure that the corresponding endpoints are added to the allowed hosts as well.

xpack.actions.enabledActionTypes

A list of action types that are enabled. It defaults to [*], enabling all types. The names for built-in Kibana action types are prefixed with a . and include: .server-log, .slack, .email, .index, .pagerduty, and .webhook. An empty list [] will disable all action types.

Disabled action types will not appear as an option when creating new connectors, but existing connectors and actions of that type will remain in Kibana and will not function.

xpack.actions .preconfiguredAlertHistoryEsIndex

Enables a preconfigured alert history Elasticsearch Index connector. Defaults to false.

xpack.actions.preconfigured

Specifies preconfigured connector IDs and configs. Defaults to {}.

xpack.actions.proxyUrl

Specifies the proxy URL to use, if using a proxy for actions. By default, no proxy is used.

xpack.actions.proxyBypassHosts

Specifies hostnames which should not use the proxy, if using a proxy for actions. The value is an array of hostnames as strings. By default, all hosts will use the proxy, but if an action’s hostname is in this list, the proxy will not be used. The settings xpack.actions.proxyBypassHosts and xpack.actions.proxyOnlyHosts cannot be used at the same time.

xpack.actions.proxyOnlyHosts

Specifies hostnames which should only use the proxy, if using a proxy for actions. The value is an array of hostnames as strings. By default, no hosts will use the proxy, but if an action’s hostname is in this list, the proxy will be used. The settings xpack.actions.proxyBypassHosts and xpack.actions.proxyOnlyHosts cannot be used at the same time.

xpack.actions.proxyHeaders

Specifies HTTP headers for the proxy, if using a proxy for actions. Defaults to {}.

xpack.actions. proxyRejectUnauthorizedCertificates

Set to false to bypass certificate validation for the proxy, if using a proxy for actions. Defaults to true.

xpack.actions.rejectUnauthorized

Set to false to bypass certificate validation for actions. Defaults to true.

As an alternative to setting both xpack.actions.proxyRejectUnauthorizedCertificates and xpack.actions.rejectUnauthorized, you can point the OS level environment variable NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS to a file that contains the root CAs needed to trust certificates.

xpack.actions.maxResponseContentLength

Specifies the max number of bytes of the http response for requests to external resources. Defaults to 1000000 (1MB).

xpack.actions.responseTimeout

Specifies the time allowed for requests to external resources. Requests that take longer are aborted. The time is formatted as:

<count>[ms,s,m,h,d,w,M,Y]

For example, 20m, 24h, 7d, 1w. Defaults to 60s.