resources

Search Guard Resource Hub including Blog Posts, FAQ, Documentation, Presentations and Whitepapers

Documentation

Get the official technical documentation for all Search Guard versions.

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Community forum

Any questions on installation or configuration? Ask our community forum.

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Frequently asked questions

What is Search Guard?

Search Guard is a comprehensive Security and Alerting suite for Elasticsearch and Kibana that provides authentication, authorization, encryption, audit logging and alerting to ensure data security and compliance.

What is your licensing model?

Search Guard is dual licensed. All 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, so you can scale your cluster indefinitely without additional costs. All other systems, like development or staging are included in the license free of charge.

Which versions of Elasticsearch does Search Guard support?

Search Guard supports nearly all versions of Elasticsearch, starting from Elasticsearch 2.x and including Elasticsearch 8.x. For more information, please check the version matrix page on our docs.

Presentations

Browse our library of presentations on all Search Guard features.

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White Papers

Download our whitepapers on Search Guard use cases and implementation examples.

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Blog

Understanding the AGPL License

|| 2025-01-07

In this blog, we’ll break down the key aspects of the AGPL, including its unique provisions, the concept of "copyleft," and the advantages and disadvantages of using this license.

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2025: You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet!

Anja || 2024-12-20

As the new year begins, we’re thrilled to kick off 2025 with big plans, exciting events, and even more content to keep you informed and inspired. Here’s what’s ahead and a look back at some of your ...

2024: A Year of Resilience and Community

Claudia || 2024-12-17

As we enter what’s known in Germany as the "5th season"—the time when everything slows down a bit, family and friends take center stage, and we wrap up the year—it's the perfect moment to pause, ...

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.

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.

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

Source Code

Access, download and inspect all our code on Gitlab, report any issue you find or request a feature.

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Videos

Introducing Search Guard FLX 3.0

Video - Introducing Search Guard FLX 3.0
Meet Search Guard Signals, the enterprise-grade alerting solution for Elasticsearch and Kibana that does not break the bank!
Unlike competitor products, Search Guard is licensed per cluster, not per node count. We have already helped our customers save millions in licensing fees. Join Search Guard and scale your cluster, not your cost!
Search Guard offers free enterprise licenses to educational institutions and non-profit organizations, allowing them to fully leverage the power of Elasticsearch while ensuring data security and compliance
How to use the Search Guard FLX Variables store to manage your configuration secrets for Elasticsearch and Kibana.
Search Guard FLX supports multiple authentication methods for Kibana, so users can choose how they would like to authenticate.
Nice little weekend project: Porting Search Guard to the Commodore 64. Had to refresh my Basic V2 skills a bit, but it was doable ;)
We demonstrate how to use the sgctl command line interface to change the security configuration of an Elasticsearch cluster.
We demonstrate how to use the Search Guard TLS Tool to generate TLS certificates for Elasticsearch.
In this webinar, we look into the Zero Trusted Networks approach and how it can be applied to Elasticsearch and Kibana.
How you can create sophisticated Elasticsearch Watches by using the Blocks Mode in Signals Alerting.
How to create a Signals Watch that monitors an Elasticsearch cluster for health and displays memory consumption in a Kibana dashboard.
Search Guard for Elasticsearch comes with a number of features that help you keep compliant with regulations like GDRP.
How to use Signals Alerting for Elasticsearch to configure a simple alert that checks your Elasticsearch data for anomalies and sends out notifications via Slack.
This video demonstrates how to quickly add new Search Guard, users how to create Search Guard roles, and how to use advanced features like document- and field-level security.
Webinar introducing Signals, the free Alerting solution for Elasticsearch from the makers of Search Guard.

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CVE advisory

We are the official CVE numbering authority for Search Guard. Browse the list of known issues..

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Disclosure Policy

If you have found a security related issue, please read our disclosure policy.

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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.