Frequently asked questions

Find answers to the most frequently asked questions about Search Guard and Signals.

General
What is Search Guard?

Search Guard is an Enterprise Security Suite that encrypts and protects your data and data flows in the entire Elastic Stack, including Kibana, Logstash and Beats.

Who is using Search Guard?

A wide variety of enterprises, from Fortune 500 companies to the most innovative start-ups around the world, are trusting in Search Guard to secure their environments. Our customers include leading companies from the finance, healthcare, telecommunications, big data, legal and aerospace sectors. We also work together with governmental agencies and provide security for scientific and educational institutions.

Is your code secure and audited?

Yes, the complete code base of Search Guard is constantly audited for security issues by ourselves and independent security experts of our customers.

Search Guard is also verified by CA Veracode. We use Veracode's patented static binary analysis technology that inspects software executables (compiled binaries or bytecode) for security flaws. Through advanced modeling, Veracode’s static engine detects flaws in the software's inputs and outputs that cannot be seen through penetration testing alone. Unlike source code review tools, this approach accurately detects issues in the core application and extends coverage to vulnerabilities found in 3rd party libraries, pre-packaged components, and code introduced by compiler or platform-specific interpretations.

Support
Do you offer support?

Of course. We offer both free support for the Search Guard community as well as paid support for our customers. As paying customer you get direct access to the core Search Guard developers and we also guarantee SLAs via our support portal.

Do you offer 24x7 support?

Yes, we offer 24x7 support. Please get in contact with us to discuss a support plan that fits your requirements.

Do you offer Elastic Stack support?

Yes, we offer support for the Elastic stack in collaboration with our authorized partners around the world. Please get in contact with us to discuss a support plan that fits your requirements.

Features
Does Search Guard support feature XYZ?

Please refer to our feature matrix for an overview of our features. If you are missing a feature for your specific use case, please get in contact with us. We work closely together with our customers to make sure Search Guard meets their needs.

Does Search Guard offer Alerting?

Yes, we are offering alerting capabilities via our Signals for Elasticsearch plugin. Signals is included in any Enterprise license subscription and offers a free community as well.

Does Search Guard offer Machine Learning?

Not yet, but we are working on it.

Licensing model
What is your licensing model?

Search Guard is dual licensed. All basic security features in the Community Edition are free, while you need to obtain a license in order to use the Enterprise or Compliance Edition in production.
We license Search Guard per production cluster, not number of nodes. The regular license has no limits regarding the number of nodes, so you can scale your cluster indefinitely without additional costs. All other systems, like development, staging, integration, test and the like are included in the license. Scale your cluster, not your cost!
We also offer discounted licenses for small installations with 5 nodes or less. Get in contact with us and we will work out a licensing model that fits your needs.

My company is non-profit, do you offer any discounts?

Absolutely. We want to give back to education and science and provide special discounts and free licenses for eligible institutions. Get in touch with us to learn more about our education & scientific licensing.

Compatibility
Is Search Guard compatible with the complete Elastic Stack?

Yes, Search Guard is compatible with the complete Elastic stack and can be used to secure Elasticseach, Kibana, Logstash and Beats. We are also compatible with the Elastic subscription based features like monitoring, alerting and machine learning.

Is Search Guard compatible with tool XYZ?

Search Guard is compatible with most third party plugins and tools, including Grafana, Cerebro and fluentd.

Getting started
What is the easiest way to set up a PoC?

The easiest way to set up a PoC and try out all Search Guard features is to use the Search Guard Demo Installer:

Search Guard Demo Installer

The installer comes with a trial license that enables all Enterprise and Compliance features for 60 days. If you need to extend your Search Guard trial, just get in contact with us and we’re happy to provide you with an extended license.

Search Guard in production
Can I run Search Guard on Kubernetes?

Absolutely. We provide K8s helm charts for Kubernetes and also work on a Kubernetes operator.

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