Monitoring Configuration

In order to detect bot activity, Netacea monitors HTTP request traffic using Akamai DataStream 2.

Prerequisites

To successfully stream web traffic logs to Netacea, please ensure you have:

  • An active Akamai account with full access to the Akamai Dashboard.

  • Enabled Akamai DataStream 2.

DataStream 2 is included with content delivery and comes with no additional charge. To enable this feature, get in touch with your Akamai account team.

  • Provided a list of protection use cases and the pathways that are vulnerable to each.

  • Provided a list of all known, safe and whitelisted users. This includes a list of trusted bots, IPs and geolocations. Any information on known bad actors is also valuable.

  • Been given the details (bucket path, name, location, credentials) of an AWS S3 Bucket hosted and provided by Netacea.

DataStream 2 Configuration

Please follow the Akamai documentation found here to create and activate a DataStream 2 stream, based on the following configuration:

Step 1: Configuration

Use the Configuration tab to enter basic stream details and choose any properties that you want to monitor.

Step 2: Data Set

During the Data Set configuration step, use the following minimum data set, defined by Netacea:

Required Field

Description

Request time

The time which the request was received

Bytes

The Bytes sent as part of the users' request

Client IP

The IP address from which the request was made

HTTP status codes

The HTTP status code returned by the server

Protocol type

The protocol of the response-request cycle.

Request host

The value of the host header in the request

Request method

The HTTP method of the request

Request path

The path of the requested resource

Query string

The query string of the request

User-Agent*

The user agent string sent in the header by the client

Referer*

The web page the user followed a link from

Turn around time

The elapsed time in milliseconds between when the last request header is received and the first byte of the reply is written to the client socket.

Custom field*

This field supports variables and it is required to log custom Netacea-specific fields.

*To monitor these fields you need to enable logging custom data set parameters in the Log Request Details behavior of the associated Akamai property. See Log custom parameters for more details.

Ensure to select JSON as the Log format.

Step 3: Delivery

  • Select Amazon S3 as the Destination.

  • In Name, enter a human-readable description for the destination.

  • In Bucket, enter the name of the relevant S3 Bucket hosted by Netacea.

  • In Folder path, populate this with "logs/", unless otherwise instructed by Netacea.

  • In Region, enter the AWS region code where the bucket resides. This should be eu-west-1 (all lowercase) unless otherwise instructed by Netacea.

  • In Access key ID and Secret access key, enter the values associated with the Amazon S3 bucket provided by Netacea.

  • Click Validate & Save to validate the connection to the destination, and save the details you provided.

  • Ensure the Push frequency is set to the lowest possible value.

Step 4: Summary and Activation

On the Summary tab, review all the details of the stream you configured and ensure to follow the above instructions. Once ready, check the Activate stream upon saving box and click Save stream.

Step 5: Enable the DataStream via a Rule

Activating a stream takes up to an hour, but it will start gathering and streaming data only after you add and enable the DataStream behavior via a Rule in your property configuration that hosts the website. Follow these steps to create the Rule to enable your DataStream:

  • Create a new property version of your existing active property version and edit the newly created version.

  • Under Property Configuration Settings, select +Rules to create a new Rule

  • Select the Blank Rule Template and provide a meaningful name for the rule before clicking Insert Rule.

  • In the Criteria section, add the following matching rule: If Hostname is one of <hostname>.

If Netacea are monitoring multiple websites you can add multiple hostnames. Only include hostnames that will be monitored by the DataStream that was created earlier.

  • In the Behaviors section, add a behavior and enable the DataStream that was created earlier.

An existing Rule can be duplicated and re-used.

  • Additionally, add a new Log Request Details behavior. Set 'Include Custom Log Field' to 'on' and Custom Log Field is set to {{user.PMUSER_NETACEA_DS2_CUSTOM_FIELD}}

The DataStream and associated Rule are now created.

Repeat the above procedure for each separate website (or group of websites) that Netacea will be monitoring.

Activate the Property

When all of the DataStreams and Rules have been created, click Save and use the Activate tab to activate (deploy) your changes to the property's configuration.

Monitoring configuration will now be deployed on the property it was configured against. You can confirm the deployment is correct by:

  • Requesting Netacea review internal monitoring metrics.

  • Requesting Netacea validate the data content & format.

Last updated

Copyright Netacea 2023