Webhooks

Verify Privilege Vault Analytics integrates into external workflow and security systems via webhooks. A webhook is a user-defined callback which is executed in response to an event (alert or warning in Verify Privilege Vault Analytics). Along with Access Challenges and email notifications, webhooks comprise the responsive actions in Verify Privilege Vault Analytics in response to detection of anomalous activity.

Configuration

URL

This is the URL to which a POST request is sent when an event is created.

Signing the Secret

This is optional. If set, a header is set (x-hub-signature) with the SHA256 signature of the body of the email.

Example Signature Verification in Python 2.7:

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from Crypto.Hash import SHA256
from Flask import requests
\# receive the request
signature = request.headers.get('x-hub-signature',None)
payload = request.data.decode('utf-8')
hmac = SHA256.new(secret)
hmac.update(payload)
expected_signature = "sha256="+hash.hexdigest()
assert signature == expected_signature

Encoding

Encoding may be set to either application/json or application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

However, only application/json supports mapped templates (customized POST body; see below).

Custom Headers

This is optional. This field takes JSON formatted headers and adds them to the POST request. For example, to configure basic authentication with username admin and password admin, you would generate the base64 string of username:password (admin:admin) using the Python example code below, and then set the custom header field to:

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{"Authorization" : "Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4="}
import base64
base64.b64encode("admin:admin")
\# output is: YWRtaW46YWRtaW4='

Mapping a Template

This is optional. The Mapping Template takes a string as an argument which will be used as the body of the POST. Before doing the POST, Verify Privilege Vault Analytics will substitute any tokens specified in the mapping template with data from the event. Here are the supported tokens:

  • EventId

  • UserId

  • UserName

  • UserEmail

  • DisplayName

  • StartDate

  • EndDate

  • RiskScore

  • Interval

  • Severity

  • Threshold

  • Hostname

When using Verify Privilege Vault Analytics, these are enclosed in @ signs, for example: @Severity@

If omitted:

If the Mapping Template is not set, then the event (alert or warning) will be serialized and posted as either JSON or urlencoded form data.

  • This out-of-the-box formatting of the POST body may be fine for integrating with custom‑built REST endpoints, but it is less useful for integrating directly with other products.

  • As an example, see the configuration for Creating an Incident with ServiceNow, below.

Example: Creating a SlackBot

The full instructions for creating a Slack Webhook consumer are available here:

  • https://api.slack.com/incoming-webhooks

In this example, we forward the Verify Privilege Vault Analytics events to Slack and they are posted to a channel using a SlackBot in our specified format.

  1. Navigate to https://api.slack.com/apps create a new app.

  2. Turn on Incoming Webhooks.

  3. Copy your Webhook URL.

  4. Click on Oauth & Permissions and under Scope > Select Permission Scopes, add Post to a specific channel in Slack for the channel to which you want the messages posted.

  5. In Verify Privilege Vault Analytics, enable Webhook, and paste the Webhook URL from Step 3 into the URL field.

  6. Create a Mapping Template with a single JSON field, text, and set its value to the format you want the SlackBot to use. For example:

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{
"text":" Verify Privilege Vault Analytics Alert: https://@Hostname@/handle_ub_alert/@EventId@\n
 Verify Privilege Vault User: @DisplayName@ (User ID:@UserId@)\n
Time Range: @StartDate@ - @EndDate@\n
Interval: @Interval@\n
Risk Score: @RiskScore@\n
Severity: @Severity@\n
Threshold: @Threshold@"
}

Example: Creating an Incident in ServiceNow

The configuration displayed below is an example of Webhook settings that would create an incident in ServiceNow. Here is the Mapping Template:

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{"assignment_group":"security",
"caller_id":"6816f79cc0a8016401c5a33be04be441",
"description":" Verify Privilege Vault Analytics Alert\n Verify Privilege Vault User: @UserName@ (UserId:@UserId@)\n
 Verify Privilege Vault Analytics Event: https://@Hostname@/eventdetails/@EventId@\n
Activity Start: @StartDate@\n
Activity End: @EndDate@\nInterval: @Interval@\n
Risk Score: @RiskScore@\nSeverity: @Severity@\n
Threshold: @Threshold@", "impact":"1",
"short_description":" Verify Privilege Vault Analytics Alert on Verify Privilege Vault User @UserName@. Risk Score: @RiskScore@",
"work_notes":"reported Verify Privilege Vault Analytics alert"}

Notes

Be aware that:

ServiceNow’s REST API uses basic authentication.

The caller_id field should be set to the id of the ServiceNow service account used for authentication.

IBM Securityprovides a callback link in the incident description: https://@Hostname@/eventdetails/@EventId@ It is also possible to configure an html URL field in ServiceNow and format this as a proper anchor tag.