Search Guard

Fast tracking compliance in Elasticsearch using Search Guard

Fast-Tracking Compliance in Elasticsearch Using Search Guard

Daniel Gleim || 2026-06-11

Search Guard provides security and compliance features directly inside the Elastic stack-configurable, integrated, and designed for regulated environments.

SG 26 BlogHeader Secure Sovereign

Cybernation Berlin 2026

Anja Glauch || 2026-06-01

Search Guard macht Elasticsearch-Cluster prüfungssicher: vom Login bis zur Verschlüsselung. Treffen Sie uns auf der Cybernation 2026 in Berlin.

SG 26 BlogHeader Secure Sovereign

Secure Isn't Sovereign: Why European Teams Are Rethinking Elasticsearch Encryption

Anja Glauch || 2026-05-21

You can be fully secure and only partially sovereign. Most EU teams running Elasticsearch today sit exactly there.

Elasticsearch Performance Secrets

Elasticsearch Performance Secrets: How to Add Enterprise-Grade Security Without Slowing Down Your Queries

Daniel Gleim || 2026-05-12

There is a persistent assumption that securing an Elasticsearch cluster means accepting slower queries. Search Guard FLX is designed to prove that wrong.

Webinar Search Guard

Webinar: How to Secure Elasticsearch in Production A Practical Implementation Guide

Anja Glauch || 2026-05-11

No-fluff session on the authentication, access control, and audit logging patterns that separate an Elastic cluster from a data-breach waiting to happen.

Webinar Search Guard

Webinar: Elasticsearch Security Beyond Defaults – What Production Environments Really Require

Anja Glauch || 2026-05-06

As Elasticsearch becomes a critical backbone for business and security-sensitive data, protecting it requires more than basic access control.

ReclaimYourTime

Reclaim Your Time and Stop Worrying About Disk Space

Daniel Gleim || 2026-04-16

Search Guard Automated Index Management (AIM) is designed to eliminate repetitive, time-consuming work that scales poorly with increasing data volumes

From Alert Fatigue to Actionable Intelligence

From Alert Fatigue to Actionable Intelligence: Turning Noise into Insight with Search Guard

Daniel Gleim || 2026-04-07

This blog post explains how SearchGuard's Signals offers effective tools to minimize irrelevant alerts and highlight meaningful issues

SG Blog Promo SG FLX

Setting Up OIDC Authentication for Kibana with Search Guard FLX

Daniel Gleim || 2026-02-25

In this guide, we'll walk through the process of configuring Keycloak OIDC authentication for Kibana using the Search Guard FLX security plugin.

SG Oct25 Blog ClusterBasedLicensing 02

Embracing Efficiency: The Benefits of Cluster-Based Licensing over Volume-Based Alternatives

Jochen Kressin || 2026-02-18

With it's cluster-based licensing model, Search Guard has already helped companies to save millions in licensing cost. Learn how you can save as well

SG Feb26 Blog EPromo ELK Solution 02

The Multi-Tenant ELK Solution: Scale Your Clients, Not Your Infrastructure

Daniel Gleim || 2026-02-12

Search Guard’s multi-tenancy capabilities are designed to make it possible to securely operate shared ELK environments without compromising isolation or control

SG Dec 2025 C Kressin 02

The Art of Human Connection: A Christmas Reflection

Claudia Kressin || 2025-12-17

As we approach the end of another year, I find myself compelled to share thoughts that look forward rather than back.

SG Oct25 Blog Signals

Search Guard Signals - Elasticsearch Alerting for Free

Daniel Gleim || 2025-11-19

SearchGuard Signals is a free alerting solution for Elasticsearch and Kibana that helps detect and notify you of events that require your attention.

SG BlogHeader MigratingElasticsearch6 8

Migrating Elasticsearch Indexes from Version 6 to 8: A Real-World Approach

Jochen Kressin || 2025-10-23

Upgrading Elasticsearch from 6 to 8? Navigate architectural changes to indexes with a practical, proven migration approach.

SG Aug25 Blog EAR compliance

Encryption at Rest – Compliance and Future-Ready Security

Daniel Gleim || 2025-09-09

In this article, we'll dive deeper into how Encryption at Rest supports compliance with international data protection standards.

SG Aug25 Blog EAR

Encryption at Rest – Real-World Use Cases and Industry Applications

Daniel Gleim || 2025-08-25

In this follow-up, we'll look at how organizations apply it in practice and why it's becoming very important in the face of emerging threats and technologies.

SG July25 Blog SecurityFix

The 5-Minute Security Fix: How to Eliminate Your Elasticsearch's Biggest Vulnerabilities Today

Jochen Kressin || 2025-08-06

This post will walk you through the most common security gaps in Elasticsearch deployments and provide a quick-start guide to closing them.

SG June25 Blog X-Pack Pt4

From X-Pack to Search Guard: Part 4 - Document- and Field-Level Security

Jochen Kressin || 2025-07-16

In this article we'll focus on migrating Document Level Security (DLS) and Field Level Security (FLS) configurations from X-Pack to Search Guard

SG June25 Blog X-Pack Pt3

From X-Pack to Search Guard: Part 3 - Users

Jochen Kressin || 2025-07-08

In this part of our migration series, we'll focus on how to migrate users from Elasticsearch X-Pack's native realm to the Search Guard internal user database.

SG June25 Blog X-Pack Pt2

From X-Pack to Search Guard: Part 2 - Roles and Permissions

Jochen Kressin || 2025-06-23

This article shows how to migrate your custom roles from X-Pack Security to Search Guard, helping you maintain your access control structure

SG June25 Blog X-Pack Pt1

From X-Pack to Search Guard: Part 1 - TLS Setup

Jochen Kressin || 2025-06-12

This article describes how to migrate TLS Settings from X-Pack Security to Search Guard Security. Scale your cluster, not your cost!

Latest Press Release

Press: Search Guard Delivers Enterprise-Grade Data Security with Predictable Cost Savings

Anja Glauch || 2025-05-15

Datensicherheit auf Enterprise-Niveau für Elasticsearch, Made in Berlin. Encryption, RBAC, Audit Logging. Bis zu 70% weniger TCO als Elastic Platinum.

Why Encryption at Rest Matters for Your Business

Daniel Gleim || 2025-04-22

In this article, we’ll explore what Encryption at Rest is, how it works, and why it’s an essential part of a modern data security strategy.

SG May25 Blog SearchEngine

How to Create a Search Engine

Daniel Gleim || 2025-04-14

In this blog post, we’ll walk through the fundamentals of creating a search engine — from the way data is stored and analyzed to how search queries are handled.

SG March25 Article Transition01

How to Transition from Elasticsearch Enterprise to SearchGuard Community Edition

Daniel Gleim || 2025-04-09

How to migrate from Elasticsearch Enterprise to the SearchGuard Community Edition to reduce costs without compromising on security features.

SG March25 Costs03

Are you using Elasticsearch? You are probably paying too much

Daniel Gleim || 2025-04-01

For users of Elasticsearch Enterprise, the free Search Guard Community Edition offers an excellent way to transition while retaining key security features.

Introducing Search Guard FLX 3.0: The Future of Enterprise Security for Elasticsearch

Jochen Kressin || 2024-12-10

We’re excited to unveil Search Guard FLX 3.0 – the most powerful and flexible security suite yet for your Elasticsearch deployment.

SG Nov NewBranding 03

Unveiling the New Look of Search Guard – Stronger, Sleeker, and Ready for the Future

Anja Glauch || 2024-11-18

In this post, we’re excited to share the design elements that make up our updated brand identity, a look we feel represents the powerful tools and robust protection that Search Guard stands for.

SG Sep SolvingErrors Title Icons

Solving "Unable to Get Local Issuer Certificate" Errors with cURL

Jochen Kressin || 2024-10-29

How to solve the infamous "curl: (60) ssl certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate" when interacting with the Elasticsearch REST API

SG Blog Header Signals Enterprise Alerting Title

Signals: Enterprise Alerting for Elasticsearch for Free

Jochen Kressin || 2024-10-15

We dive into Signals, our enterprise grade Alerting solution for Elasticsearch and Kibana. You can get the Community Edition for free!

SG Blog SG Alert

Search Guard Alerting vs Elastalert: Which one to use?

Jochen Kressin || 2024-08-20

We take a look at Elastalert and compare it with Signals, the free Search Guard Alerting solution for Elasticsearch and Kibana and explain why Signals is the winner.

SG Blog Deploying Secure Elasticsearch Clusters with Search Guard Helm Charts

Deploying Secure Elasticsearch Clusters with Search Guard Helm Charts

Jochen Kressin || 2024-08-20

This articles describes how to use the Search Guard Elasticsearch Helm Charts for deploying Elasticsearch and Search Guard on Kubernetes.

Log Analytics Pt02

Log Monitoring with Signals Pt.2: Configuring a Watch

Jochen Kressin || 2024-08-01

In this article we'll set up a Watch that periodically scans log data stored in Elasticsearch for errors. We use the Kibana Alerting UI to set everything up.

Log Analytics Pt01

Log Monitoring with Signals Pt.1: Setting up Notification Channels

Jochen Kressin || 2024-07-18

In this article series, we will show you how to use Signals to monitor ingested log data for anomalies and send notifications on various channels if such an anomaly is detected.

Blog Fully Automated Cluster

Tech Preview: AIM for a Fully Automated Cluster

Aki Abramowski || 2024-02-12

Automated Index Management (AIM) is used to automatically manage indices to your needs based on index stats.

Photo by Philipp Katzenberger on Unsplash

ODFE is archived - it's time to revisit your security solution!

Search Guard || 2023-11-30

Open Distro for Elasticsearch is not supported anymore - switch to Search Guard now to ensure your Elasticsearch cluster is safe and secure

elasticsearch rbac abac

Decoding RBAC and ABAC: A Detailed Comparison

Jochen Kressin || 2023-07-12

We delve into the concepts behind RBAC and ABAC and explore how Search Guard enables the implementation of both.

Blog-Image-SearchGuard-Birthday7

Happy Birthday, Search Guard: We made it to SEVEN!

Claudia Kressin || 2023-06-17

We made it to seven. To celebrate we share seven snapshots as we look back inspired by music that moves us all.

Search Guard FLX

Search Guard vs. Search Guard FLX

Jochen Kressin || 2023-04-19

We explore the differences and similarities of Search Guard and Search Guard FLX and outline how to migrate to Search Guard FLX.

Kibana Multiple Authentication

When Single Sign On is not enough: Supporting multiple authentication methods in Kibana

Jochen Kressin || 2022-08-10

In this post we have a look at how to set up Kibana with multiple authentication types: OIDC and the internal user database.

Elasticsearch configure security

sgctl - Take back control

Jochen Kressin || 2022-08-08

We look at the new sgctl command line interface that ships with Search Guard FLX and demonstrate how easy it has become to configure security for Elasticsearch.

Blog-Image-SearchGuard-SearchGuardFLX TechnicalPreview

Security for Elasticsearch and OpenSearch: Better Than Ever

Nils Bandener || 2022-03-08

We have been busy working on the next generation of Search Guard. Right now, we are very close to the actual general availability release.

search guard birthday

Happy Birthday Search Guard: Five Years Old and Still Going Strong!

Claudia Kressin || 2021-06-30

Happy Birthday Search Guard! Let's take a quick look back at the last year, share what we've been up to lately, let you know what's coming, and perhaps even squeeze in a piece of cake.

Search-Guard-Maven-Gitlab

Search Guard Maven and GitLab structure

Jochen Kressin || 2020-08-16

How to use the Search Guard Maven Repository and how the source code is structured on the Search Guard Gitlab server

Change Elasticsearch TLS certificates at runtime

Changing Elasticsearch TLS certificates at runtime

Jochen Kressin || 2020-07-27

How to change and reload any TLS certificate on a running Elasticsearch cluster without any downtime or rolling restart.

Search Guard v43 Elasticsearch 7.8.0

Search Guard v43 is out

Jochen Kressin || 2020-07-07

Search Guard v43 for Elasticsearch 7.8.0 is available now, containing new features like certificate hot reloading or a new and improved Alerting block mode UI.

elasticsearch proxy authentication

Proxy authentication using TLS certificates

Aki Abramowski || 2020-02-24

The new Search Guard proxy authentication module for Elasticsearch and Kibana supports IP as well as TLS certificate authentication.

Search Guard | New Versions

Search Guard - new versions available

jkressin || 2019-10-12

None of the recent events will stop or hinder our mission of providing our customers with high end, innovative security solutions for the Elastic Stack.

elasticsearch ldap authentication 2

LDAP authentication and authorisation, part 2: Configuring Search Guard

jkressin || 2019-07-03

How to configure LDAP or Active Directory for Elasticsearch user authentication and authorization by using the Search Guard security plugin.

elasticsearch security free

Security for Elasticsearch was always free with Search Guard

Jochen Kressin || 2019-05-28

The Community Edition of Search Guard always offered Elasticsearch security for free. Trust the Security Suite from the Elasticsearch security pioneers.

Log ingestion with Beats, Logstash and Search Guard

Paulo Melo || 2019-03-20

How to configure Search Guard with Elasticsearch log analytics tools like Beats and logstash to protect log data in your cluster.

Elasticsearch client certificate authentication

Cliff Stayley || 2019-02-06

How to use TLS client certificate authentication with Elasticsearch by using Search Guard, the enterprise security suite for Elasticsearch.

elasticsearch ldap 1

LDAP authentication and authorisation, part 1: OpenLDAP setup

Cliff Stayley || 2019-01-28

This article describes how to set up OpenLDAP for Elasticsearch authentication and authorisation in combination with Search Guard.

openssl elasticsearch tls searchguard

Creating Search Guard TLS certificates with OpenSSL

Jochen Kressin || 2019-01-04

This article shows how to create TLS certificates for securing Elasticsearch with Search Guard from scratch by using OpenSSL.

elasticsearch security custom modules

Custom authentication modules

Jochen Kressin || 2018-12-11

This article demonstrates how to implement custom authentication and authorization modules for Search Guard to secure your Elasticsearch cluster.

elasticsearch security first steps

First steps - Set up users and roles

Jochen Kressin || 2018-10-21

This article explains the Search Guard request flow and provides step-by-step instruction to add new users, roles and permissions.

tls certificates introduction elasticsearch

An introduction to TLS certificates

Cliff Staley || 2018-10-08

Securing the Elasticsearch inter-node traffic with TLS is a must. This article gives an introduction to TLS certificates and how they work.

elasticsearch monitoring searchguard

Using X-Pack Monitoring with Search Guard

Cliff Staley || 2018-10-01

Search Guard comes with predefined roles that make it easy to use X-Pack Monitoring, Alerting and Machine Learning with Elasticsearch.

saml elasticsearch kibana

Using SAML for Kibana Single Sign On

Jochen Kressin || 2018-08-16

Search Guard fully supports for SAML, so you can use your favorite identity provider like Keycloak, Okta or Auth0 to implement easy Kibana Single Sign-On.

elasticsearch user impersonation

User Impersonation: Submit requests on behalf of another user

Cliff Staley || 2018-08-08

The best way to assure security rules work as desired, is to test the configuration. The Search Guard User Impersonation feature that makes testing easy.

kibana openid connect

Kibana Single Sign-On with OpenID and Keycloak

Jochen Kressin || 2018-07-12

Use Search Guard to implement Kibana Single Sign On with OpenID. Use your favorite identity provider like Keycloak, Okta or Auth0 with the Elastic stack.

search guard integrations enterprise

Search Guard Enterprise Integrations

Jochen Kressin || 2018-05-20

Search Guard is integrated in many enterprise grade software solutions by vendors like Red Hat, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, IBM or CA Technologies.

elasticsearch write history gdpr

Write History: Monitoring document changes for GDPR compliance

Jochen Kressin || 2018-04-21

Use the Search Guard Write History to track the lifetime of PII documents in your cluster and to stay compliant with GDPR regulations.

elasticsearch immutable indices

How Immutable Indices help you to stay GDPR compliant

Jochen Kressin || 2018-04-16

Once a document has been written to an Immutable Index, Search Guard makes sure it cannot be changed afterwards.

compliance for elasticsearch beta

Compliance Edition Beta released

Jochen Kressin || 2018-03-28

Meet our new family of features geared specifically towards meeting GDRP, HIPAA, SOX, ISO and other compliance regulations. Field anonymization, immutable indices and documents and integrity checks, just to name a few ...

elasticsearch jwt openid

Using JSON web tokens to secure Elasticsearch

Cliff Staley || 2018-03-19

How to set up and use JSON web tokens to implement Single-Sign-On access to Elasticsearch and Kibana, and how to integrate with Keycloak.

Search Guard puts security first

Search Guard puts security first

Jochen Kressin || 2018-01-30

Search Guard provides the highest level of security for Elasticsearch possible. Our mission is to always put security first.

Elasticsearch attribute based security

What's new in Search Guard 6: Attribute based document access

Claudia Kressin || 2018-01-15

The Search Guard security suite for Elasticsearch and Kibana provides attribute based access control for documents in your Elasticsearch cluster

Search Guard 6 has arrived

Search Guard 6 is coming!

Claudia Kressin || 2017-08-21

Search Guard 6 will arrive soon with a whole bunch of new features that help you keeping Elasticsearch and Kibana secure.

Meeting Elasticsearch compliance regulations

Meeting compliance regulations with Search Guard audit logging

Jochen Kressin || 2017-06-09

Search Guard provides a sound, bullet-proof, and flexible Audit Log module that enables you to record any activity in your cluster.

Search Guard 5 has arrived

Search Guard 5 is here!

Jochen Kressin || 2016-11-14

Search Guard 5 is compatible with Elasticsearch 5 and offers all features of our previous Search Guard versions.

Transport client authorisation with Elasticsearch

Transport client authentication and authorization

Jochen Kressin || 2016-11-13

How to use an Elasticsearch transport client with Search Guard authentication and authorization.

Manage Search Guard replica shards in Elasticsearch

Managing the replica shards of the Search Guard index

Jochen Kressin || 2016-09-10

This article describes how to manage the replica shards of the Search Guard security configuration index for high availability

Document- and field-level security with Elasticsearch

Document- and field-level security with Search Guard

Jochen Kressin || 2016-08-17

Use document- and field-level security with Elasticsearch and Kibana to restrict access to documents and fields.

Using transport clients with search guard

Using Transport Clients with Search Guard

Jochen Kressin || 2016-07-26

How to use Transport Clients to securely access your Elasticsearch cluster that is protected by Search Guard.

Why does Search Guard require TLS

Why does Search Guard require SSL/TLS?

Jochen Kressin || 2016-07-09

In this article we explain how Search Guard uses TLS to protect the traffic in your Elasticsearch cluster on REST and transport layer.

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Search Guard is a trademark of floragunn GmbH, registered in the U.S. and in other countries. Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash, and Beats are trademarks of Elasticsearch BV, registered in the U.S. and in other countries. Apache and Apache Lucene are trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries.