Box Events

The Box Events integration allows you to monitor Box. Box is a secure cloud storage and collaboration service that allows businesses and individuals to easily share files.

Use the Box Events integration to ingest the activity logs which are generated each time files are uploaded, accessed, or modified in Box, enabling you to monitor data movement to the cloud. If you have opted-in to receive additional events, the Box Events integration will ingest context-rich alerts on potential threats, such as compromised accounts and data theft, based on anomalous user behavior. Combining this data with other events can lead to the detection of data exfiltration attacks.

Then visualize that data in Kibana, create alerts to notify you if something goes wrong, and reference box_events.events when troubleshooting an issue.

For example, if you wanted to set up notifications for incoming Box Shield alerts you could verify that this data is being ingested from the Box Shield Alerts Dashboard. Then, go to Alerts and Insights / Rules and Connectors in the sidebar and set up a Rule using an Elasticsearch Query against index *box*alert* with time field @timestamp and DSL

{
  "query":{
    "match" : {
      "event.kind": "alert"
    }
  }
}

to match incoming box alerts during your desired timeframe and notify you using your preferred connector.

Compatibility

The Box Web Application does not feature version numbers, see this Community Post. This integration was configured and tested against Box in the second quarter of 2022.

Box Events

The Box events API enables subscribing to live events across the enterprise or for a particular user, or querying historical events across the enterprise.

The API Returns up to a year of past events for configurable to the admin user (default) or for the entire enterprise.

Elastic Integration for Box Events Settings

The Elastic Integration for Box Events requires the following Authentication Settings in order to connect to the Target service:

• Client ID
• Client Secret
• Box Subject ID
• Box Subject Type
• Grant Type

The Elastic Integration for Box Events requires the following Data Stream Settings to configure the request to the Target API:

• Interval
• Stream Type
• Preserve Original Event

Here is a brief guide to help you generate these settings

Target Repository Authentication Settings Prerequisites

The Elastic Integration for Box Events connects using OAuth 2.0 to interact with a Box Custom App. As prerequisites you will need to:

• Enable MFA/2FA on your admin account by following the instructions in MFA Setup on Box Support
• Configure a Box Custom Application using Server Authentication
(with Client Credentials Grant). A suggested workflow is provided below, see Setup with OAuth 2.0 for additional information.

Authorized User

It is important to login to the Box Developer Console as an admin and not co-admin.

A suggested workflow is as follows:

Create a Custom Application using Server Authentication (with Client Credentials Grant) authentication

1. Open the Box Developer Console
2. Click on Create new App
3. Click on Custom App
4. Select Server Authentication (Client Credentials Grant)
5. Provide an App name, for example elastic-box-integration
6. Click on Create App
7. When your App has been created, scroll down and under App Access Level select App + Enterprise Access
8. Scroll down to Application Scopes and under Administrative Actions select

• Manage users
• Manage enterprise properties

9. Scroll down to Advanced Features and select

• Generate user access tokens

10. Click on Save Changes

Submit the application for Authorization from the Box Developer Console

1. In the left side bar, at the bottom, click on </> Dev Console
2. Click on your application, which should now have an extra Authorization tab, so click on this
3. Click on Review and Submit, add a comment to explain your changes then click on Submit.

Authorize the Application from the Box Admin Console

If you are the admin user you can do this yourself, otherwise reach out to the admin to confirm your motives and request that they authorize your request, since there may be some delay before they are aware of your request.

To authorize the App ensure you are logged in to the Admin Console and follow these steps:

1. In the left side bar click on Apps
2. Click on the Custom Apps Manager tab, you should see your App under Server Authentication Apps and the Authorisation Status should be Pending Reauth
3. Click on your App, it should have the following App Details:

• Last Activity
  • <date>
• Developer Email
  • <your email>
• Authorization Status
  • Pending Reauthorization
• Enablement Status
  • Enabled
• Client ID
  • <alphanumeric id>
• App Access
  • All Users
• App Scopes
  • Read and write all files and folders stored in Box
  • Manage enterprise properties
  • Manage users
  • Manage app users
  • Generate user access tokens
• Authentication Type
  • OAuth 2.0 with Client Credentials Grant

4. Click on Authorize - a pop up will reconfirm these details
5. Click on Authorize - the Authorization Status should update to

• Authorized

Locate the Elastic Integration for Box Events Settings

Client ID

Click on your App in the Box Developer Console, under the Configuration tab, scroll down to OAuth 2.0 Credentials and copy the Client ID

Client Secret

Have your 2FA device prepared and to hand. Click on your App in the Box Developer Console, under the Configuration tab, scroll down to OAuth 2.0 Credentials and click on Fetch Client Secret. Complete the 2FA challenge to copy the Client Secret

Box Subject ID

Click on your App in the Box Developer Console, under the General Settings tab, scroll down to App Info. If you intend to harvest events solely for the admin user copy the User ID otherwise copy the Enterprise ID

Box Subject Type

If you intend to harvest events solely for the admin user set this to user otherwise set to enterprise

Grant Type

Use the provided default client_credentials

Interval

This sets the interval between requests to the Target Service, for example 300s will send a request every 300 seconds. Events will be returned in batches of up to 100, with successive calls on expiry of the configured interval so you may wish to specify a lower interval when a substantial number of events are expected, however, we suggest to consider bandwidth when using lower settings

Stream Type

To retrieve events for a single user, set stream type to all (default). To select only events that may cause file tree changes such as file updates or collaborations, use changes. To select a subset of changes for synced folders, use sync. To retrieve events for the entire enterprise, set the stream_type to admin_logs_streaming for live monitoring of new events, or admin_logs for querying across historical events.

Preserve Original Event

Preserves a raw copy of the original event, added to the field event.original.

Exported fields

Changelog