Verify Privilege Vault Telemetry

This topic only applies to Verify Privilege Vault On-Premises

Overview

There are 3 reasons for IBM Security products to call home—when:

Checking for available updates
Activating licenses
Reporting anonymized usage metrics

Each of these communications is explained below and can be disabled or avoided.

Checking for and Downloading Updates

Frequency: Once per day

The software checks for available updates and sends the following information to IBM Security's update server:

.NET Framework version
IP address of the installed instance
Microsoft SQL Server version
Microsoft Windows version
Product version

Checking for updates and sending this information will only occur if both of the following are true:

The server has outbound network access, which you can block at a firewall.
The "Allow Automatic Checks for Software Updates" check box is enabled at Admin > Configuration > Application (see below).

No sensitive data is sent during the check. Its only purpose is to alert administrators if a software update is available. The queried website is also used to download new software versions during the upgrade process. If you wish to allowlist the specific servers involved, they are:

d36zgw9sidnotm.cloudfront.net:443
updates.thycotic.net:443
updates.thycotic.net:80
tmsnuget.thycotic.com/nuget/

Note that Secret Server would still manually check for an update if there is internet access and a manual update is triggered, even if Allow Automatic Checks for Software Updates feature is off.

License Activation

Frequency: when a new license is activated.

The software also sends contact and license-key information, provided by the administrator, to IBM Security during online license activation. The same information is sent via another computer for offline activation.

Reporting Anonymized Usage Metrics

This section only applies to Verify Privilege Vault and Verify Privilege Vault Cloud versions 10.6 and above.

IBM Security collects anonymized usage data to help guide future research and development plans so that product improvements can provide the greatest benefit to customers.

Frequency: Once per day

Verify Privilege Vault returns anonymized metrics across several categories:

A unique identifier number that allows IBM Security to correlate metrics from the same server over time but does not contain any information that identifies the customer.
License information, including edition information and the number of licensed users but not license keys or other identifying data.
Product configuration and usage, such as number of secrets stored and product feature status, not including any identifying data.
Product environment, including host operating system and SQL server version, not including any identifying data.

Reporting of anonymized metrics only occurs if:

The server has outbound network access (you can block your server at a firewall if desired)
The "Send Anonymized System Metrics to IBM Security" setting under Admin > Configuration is enabled (see below).

You can allow for the metrics reporting on your firewall by allowlisting: https://telemetry.thycotic.net:443.

Setting and Viewing Verify Privilege Vault Telemetry

To set or view telemetry:

Click Admin > Configuration search, then select Application from the General section. The Applicationsettings page appears:
(Optional) To view the JSON file for the possible sent metrics, click the View Metric Data link. The file appears:
Click Edit. The section changes to edit mode.
Click to select or deselect the Send Anonymized System Metrics to IBM Security check box.
Scroll down and click the Save button.