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How to Build a SIEM with Suricata and the Elastic Stack

Learn how to build a practical Suricata and Elastic Stack SIEM, from EVE JSON configuration and Elastic Agent collection to validation, tuning, detections and troubleshooting.

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Build the SIEM in this order: run Suricata on the traffic you need to monitor, enable its EVE JSON output, collect that file with Elastic Agent’s maintained Suricata integration, verify the normalized events in Elasticsearch and Kibana, then add carefully scoped Elastic Security detection rules. Filebeat’s Suricata module is a documented alternative when you need a file-oriented collector. The result combines Suricata network telemetry with Elastic Security’s search, dashboards, detections and response workflow.

What this SIEM does

Suricata is the network intrusion-detection and prevention (IDS/IPS) and network-security-monitoring sensor. Its EVE output writes alerts, anomalies, metadata, file information and protocol records as JSON. Elastic Agent reads that file, applies the Suricata integration’s ingest processing and sends events to an Elastic deployment. Elasticsearch stores and indexes the documents; Kibana provides Discover, dashboards and the Elastic Security interface. Elastic Security’s detection engine evaluates rules against the indexed data and shows resulting alerts alongside alerts from other security tools.

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This architecture separates sensing from analysis. Suricata sees packets on a monitored interface or mirrored feed and produces evidence. The collector handles shipping and parsing. Elasticsearch supplies retention and search, while Kibana supplies investigation and rule management. A sensor can therefore remain focused on packet analysis while the SIEM handles correlation, triage and historical queries.

Compatibility, topology and prerequisites

The current Elastic Suricata integration lists compatibility with Suricata 5.x, 6.x and 7.x and Elastic Stack 8.11.0 or later. Its package page lists Kibana 9.0.0 as the minimum Kibana version for the current integration package. Check the versions in your own deployment before installing, because integration packages and Elastic Stack components are versioned independently.

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Component Role Requirement or decision
Suricata Network IDS/IPS and NSM sensor A running 5.x, 6.x or 7.x instance with visibility of the interface, TAP or mirror feed that carries the traffic of interest.
EVE JSON Suricata’s structured event stream Enable regular-file output and ensure the configured path is readable by the collector.
Elastic Agent Preferred collector Install it on the Suricata host or on a host that can read the EVE file. Attach the Suricata integration to its agent policy.
Elasticsearch Storage, indexing and search Provide an Elastic deployment sized for your event rate, enabled event families and retention period.
Kibana Integration management, Discover, dashboards and Elastic Security Use a version supported by the integration package; the current package lists 9.0.0 as its minimum Kibana version.
Traffic access Packets for Suricata to inspect Use a local interface for a host sensor or a network TAP/mirror feed where appropriate. A TAP is topology-dependent, not a universal requirement.

Choose where the sensor runs

For a home lab, Suricata can run on a gateway, a virtual machine connected to a mirrored virtual switch port, or a dedicated monitoring host. For a small business, place it where east-west or north-south traffic can actually be observed, document the monitored segments and account for asymmetric routing. A sensor that cannot see the relevant packets will produce an apparently healthy but incomplete SIEM.

Plan access and permissions

  • Give the Elastic Agent permission to open /var/log/suricata/eve.json and traverse every parent directory.
  • Allow the agent to reach the Elastic deployment over the required network path and TLS configuration.
  • Reserve disk for Suricata’s local file and for Elasticsearch data streams; decide what happens when either fills.
  • Record the sensor’s hostname, monitored interfaces, Suricata version, integration version and assigned agent policy for later troubleshooting.

Decide which Suricata event families to collect

Start with alert and flow records for detection and baseline visibility. Add protocol-specific records when they answer an investigation question. More event families improve context but increase CPU, disk, indexing and query costs; there is no universal event-rate or storage number because traffic mix, rule set, hardware and retention dominate sizing.

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EVE family Useful information When to enable
alert Signature, action and alert context from Suricata rules Always for an IDS-oriented deployment.
anomaly Protocol or decoder anomalies that may reveal malformed or evasive traffic Enable for detection engineering and troubleshooting.
flow Connection start/end, bytes, packets and flow state Keep for baseline traffic and investigations.
dns DNS questions, answers and transaction context Enable when domain investigations or DNS detections matter.
http HTTP request and response metadata Enable on segments where clear-text HTTP or useful HTTP metadata exists.
tls TLS handshake and certificate-related metadata Enable for encrypted-traffic context.
ssh SSH protocol metadata Enable where administrative access or SSH abuse is in scope.
fileinfo Observed file metadata and hashes when available Enable when file transfer investigations justify the additional volume.
stats Sensor counters and health information Enable to monitor packet-processing and event-generation health.
smb, smtp, dhcp, nfs, kerberos Protocol-specific context Add only when those protocols exist in the monitored environment or support a defined investigation use case.

Step 1: Install and verify Suricata

Install a Suricata release supported by the integration and configure its rules and interfaces for your operating system. Before involving Elastic, prove that the sensor itself is healthy.

  1. Start or enable the Suricata service using your platform’s service manager.
  2. Confirm that the process is running and that the configured capture interface or mirror feed is receiving packets.
  3. Check Suricata’s own logs for rule-loading, decoder or permission errors.
  4. Generate ordinary traffic that should cross the monitored interface and verify that counters or flow output change.

Do not treat a running process as proof of visibility. A wrong interface, an unconfigured virtual switch mirror or asymmetric routing can leave Suricata active while it observes little or no useful traffic.

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Step 2: Enable EVE JSON

Edit suricata.yaml and enable the eve-log output with regular-file storage. Set the filename to eve.json; the common resulting path is /var/log/suricata/eve.json. Select event types deliberately.

outputs:
  - eve-log:
      enabled: yes
      filetype: regular
      filename: eve.json
      types:
        - alert
        - anomaly
        - flow
        - dns
        - http
        - tls
        - ssh
        - fileinfo
        - stats

The exact indentation and surrounding keys must match the Suricata configuration shipped by your distribution. Preserve the standard EVE JSON field names expected by the integration; custom formatting can cause records to land in error.message instead of parsed ECS fields.

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  1. Save the configuration and restart Suricata.
  2. Confirm that the file exists and that new lines arrive while benign traffic is generated.
  3. Inspect one raw line locally. It should be valid JSON and contain the event type plus the normal Suricata fields.
  4. Check ownership and mode on the file and every parent directory. The Elastic Agent account needs read permission on the file and execute permission on directories.

Step 3: Add the Elastic Suricata integration

Elastic Agent is the maintained collection path for the current integration.

  1. Sign in to Kibana and open Management → Integrations.
  2. Search for Suricata and choose Add Suricata.
  3. Enter the absolute path to the EVE file, such as /var/log/suricata/eve.json. The path must exactly match the file produced on the sensor.
  4. Select or create the agent policy that is assigned to the Elastic Agent on the Suricata host.
  5. Review the integration settings, save the policy and deploy it.
  6. On the host, confirm that the agent receives the updated policy and that its service remains healthy.

The integration reads EVE JSON, applies Elastic’s ingest processing and publishes normalized events to Elastic data streams. Keep the original file available while validating so you can compare a raw record with the indexed document.

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Filebeat alternative

Filebeat remains a documented alternative when your operating model uses standalone Beats. Its Suricata module parses EVE JSON, uses an Elasticsearch ingest pipeline and deploys Kibana dashboards. Enable at least one fileset and set the path, for example /var/log/suricata/eve.json.

Do not run two collectors against the same file unless you intentionally want duplicate data and have a plan to distinguish it. Choose one ownership model, document its service account and confirm which component manages the ingest pipeline and dashboards. Elastic Agent is the straightforward choice for a new deployment because the maintained integration is configured from the Integrations page and attached to an agent policy.

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Step 4: Validate the complete pipeline

Validation should move from the sensor outward, so a failure has a clear boundary.

  1. Sensor: generate benign test traffic described by the integration’s official documentation and confirm that new EVE lines appear locally.
  2. Collector: inspect the Elastic Agent or Filebeat service status and logs for file-permission, connection or harvester errors.
  3. Indexing: open Kibana Discover and select the data view that contains the Suricata data stream.
  4. Dataset filter: run the KQL filter event.dataset : "suricata.eve".
  5. Field mapping: open several documents and verify that event type, timestamps, addresses, ports and protocol-specific values appear as searchable fields rather than being buried in error.message.
  6. Dashboard: open the prebuilt Logs Suricata dashboard, if deployed by your package, and check that its panels show the same time range as Discover.
  7. Security view: confirm that Suricata alerts are visible in the unified Elastic Security experience and that the event time reflects the sensor event rather than only ingestion time.

Use a narrow time range during testing. A broad query can hide a path or mapping problem among old documents and makes latency harder to judge.

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Step 5: Control volume, retention and cost

Tune collection only after you have a known-good baseline. Keep alert and flow for core visibility, then add DNS, HTTP, TLS, SSH or file information according to investigation requirements. High-volume protocol records can materially increase storage and query cost.

  • Set retention and index or data-stream policies to the period your incident process actually needs.
  • Separate long-term, lower-cost retention from the hot data used for daily detection when your Elastic deployment supports that lifecycle design.
  • Watch Elasticsearch disk usage, ingestion lag and rejected or failed documents as event families are enabled.
  • Do not delete flow data merely to reduce volume before checking whether it is needed for baselining and incident timelines.
  • Benchmark with your own traffic rate, enabled event types, rule set, hardware and retention. No authoritative performance, detection-rate or storage figure is established for this design.
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Step 6: Turn Suricata events into Elastic Security detections

Detection rules should be added after parsing is verified. Start with a focused query over the normalized Suricata data, run it over a short schedule, inspect matches and only then add actions or widen the window.

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Start with a narrow KQL rule

Use the dataset filter as the first constraint:

event.dataset : "suricata.eve"

Add conditions using the fields you confirmed in Discover. Depending on the integration version and event family, useful ECS fields can include event category, event kind, source and destination addresses, destination port, network transport and the Suricata alert signature. Field names and availability vary by event type, so do not publish a rule until a real document proves the field is populated.

Choose a rule type that matches the question

  • Custom query: use for a precise condition, such as a confirmed Suricata alert signature combined with a network segment or destination.
  • Threshold: use when repeated events in a time window matter more than one event, such as many alerts from one source.
  • Event correlation or other supported types: use when the investigation requires a sequence across normalized events and the selected Elastic version supports that rule type.

Set the schedule and look-back window deliberately. A window that is too wide increases search cost; one that is too short can miss slow activity. Add alert actions only after you understand the match rate and have assigned an owner for triage.

Control false positives

Expected vulnerability scanners, monitoring systems and administrative traffic should be documented and handled with Elastic rule exceptions where appropriate. Tune the underlying Suricata rule when the sensor is generating noise for everyone, and use an Elastic exception when the exception belongs only to one detection or environment. Review exceptions as addresses, scanners and maintenance windows change.

Avoid expensive group-bys

High-cardinality grouping fields can cause rule timeouts or circuit-breaker errors. Start with a bounded field and a short window; narrow the indices and filters; then add grouping only if the investigation demonstrates that it is necessary. If a rule times out, reduce the search window, reduce the data set and remove or replace the highest-cardinality group-by field before increasing resources.

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Operate the SIEM after deployment

A SIEM is an operating process, not just an ingest pipeline. Assign who reviews alerts, what severity means and which response steps apply to each important signature.

  • Triage: record the analyst, time, affected source and destination, Suricata signature, supporting flow or protocol evidence and disposition.
  • Rule maintenance: update Suricata rules and review Elastic exceptions on a defined cadence.
  • Health monitoring: watch agent status, ingest errors, failed documents, local disk, Elasticsearch disk, event latency and data-stream growth.
  • Coverage reviews: verify that monitored interfaces still carry the intended traffic after network or virtualization changes.
  • Access control: limit who can change Suricata rules, integration policies, detection rules and response actions.
  • Recovery: document how to restart the sensor and collector, where EVE files are located, how to verify backlog recovery and when to declare a visibility gap.

Troubleshooting by symptom

Symptom Checks Likely correction
No events in Discover Confirm Suricata is running, EVE logging is enabled, the path in Kibana exactly matches the file, and the agent account can read and traverse the path. Correct the interface or EVE configuration, fix permissions, redeploy the policy and generate fresh benign traffic.
Raw file grows but documents are absent Check agent or Filebeat service logs, output connectivity and policy assignment. Restore the collector’s connection or attach the integration to the agent actually running on the sensor.
Documents contain parsing errors Compare a raw JSON line with the integration’s expected standard EVE format. Restore standard EVE fields and remove custom formatting that breaks the parser.
Events arrive in error.message Inspect the raw record and the ingest error details. Correct malformed JSON or unsupported field structure, then test with a newly generated record.
Expected protocol context is missing Check whether that EVE event type is enabled and whether the parser maps it into ECS fields. Enable the relevant event family, restart Suricata and verify a fresh record.
Detection rules time out Review search window, index scope and group-by fields. Narrow indices and filters, shorten the window and avoid high-cardinality grouping unless essential.
Too many alerts Identify recurring signatures, known scanners and maintenance traffic. Tune Suricata rules, add narrowly scoped Elastic exceptions and document why each exception exists.

A practical build pattern for a home lab or small business

Use one Suricata sensor first, one Elastic Agent policy and a limited event set: alerts, flows, DNS, TLS and statistics. Validate the complete path before adding HTTP, file information or less common protocols. Once the baseline is stable, create a small number of detections tied to real response actions instead of importing every possible rule.

For a multi-segment network, add sensors only where they answer a coverage question. Name each agent and sensor after its location, preserve the monitored-interface map and include the sensor identity in investigations. If a passive TAP or mirror is used, verify that it carries both directions of the conversations you intend to analyze; a one-way feed can produce incomplete flows and misleading conclusions.

What success looks like

A successful deployment has four observable properties: Suricata continuously writes valid EVE JSON; the collector reads the exact file without permission or harvester errors; Kibana shows parsed documents under event.dataset : "suricata.eve"; and Elastic Security rules produce a manageable number of owned, investigated alerts. Keep those checks in your change procedure so upgrades, interface changes and rule updates do not silently reduce visibility.

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