Forwarding Audit Logs to Splunk

This page walks through configuring Stratora to forward audit events to Splunk Enterprise or Splunk Cloud via TCP+TLS. Splunk's syslog receiver path (Universal Forwarder / Heavy Forwarder / Cloud HEC) accepts RFC 5424 traffic natively.

Splunk-side setup

Option 1 — TCP+TLS on a Universal/Heavy Forwarder

Most production Splunk deployments use a Forwarder to terminate the syslog connection and parse events before sending to indexers. Configure the Forwarder to listen on TCP+TLS port 6514:

$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/inputs.conf:

[tcp-ssl:6514]
sourcetype = syslog
index = stratora_audit
disabled = 0

$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/server.conf:

[sslConfig]
serverCert = $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/auth/server-cert.pem
sslPassword = <your-password>
requireClientCert = false

Restart splunkd after editing both files.

Option 2 — Splunk Connect for Syslog (SC4S)

For larger deployments, Splunk Connect for Syslog (SC4S) is the recommended pattern. SC4S runs as a container fronting Splunk indexers and handles syslog at the edge. SC4S accepts RFC 5424 / 3164 over UDP, TCP, and TCP+TLS out of the box.

Point Stratora at the SC4S endpoint instead of a Forwarder; the receiver-side configuration is identical from Stratora's perspective.

Firewall configuration

If your SIEM runs on a RHEL-family Linux distribution (RHEL, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, CentOS Stream), the default firewalld policy blocks incoming syslog ports. Allow the port with:

sudo firewall-cmd --add-port=6514/tcp --permanent
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Debian and Ubuntu deployments don't have this gate by default.

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Certificate setup

Splunk's TLS listener presents the cert configured in server.conf. Stratora needs to trust that cert's signing chain.

If the cert is signed by a publicly-trusted CA: leave Stratora's Custom CA Certificate field empty.

If the cert is self-signed or signed by an internal CA: paste the CA's PEM into Stratora's Custom CA Certificate field at wizard Step 3.

Certificate SAN requirement

Stratora's TLS verification (Go crypto/tls) requires the receiver certificate to have Subject Alternative Name (SAN) entries matching the destination Host you configured. Common Name (CN) alone is not sufficient under modern Go clients.

When generating a self-signed cert for Splunk, ensure the SAN includes both the FQDN and short name:

openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout splunk.key -out splunk.pem \
  -days 365 -nodes \
  -subj "/CN=splunk-hf-01.example.com" \
  -addext "subjectAltName=DNS:splunk-hf-01.example.com,DNS:splunk-hf-01"

If the cert SAN doesn't match the Host field you entered in Stratora, the handshake fails with x509: certificate is not valid for any names, but wanted to match <Host>.

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Stratora-side configuration

Navigate to Settings → Syslog Destinations → Add Destination and walk through the wizard:

Step	Field	Value
1 — Details	Name	Splunk Production (or your own naming convention)
2 — Connection	Host	The Splunk Forwarder / SC4S hostname matching the cert SAN
2 — Connection	Port	6514
2 — Connection	Protocol	TCP + TLS (recommended)
3 — Format	RFC Format	RFC 5424 (modern)
3 — Format	Facility	local0 (or non-default if you segregate sources at the receiver)
3 — Format	Verify server certificate	ON
3 — Format	Custom CA Certificate	Paste your CA cert PEM here if self-signed or internal CA
4 — Review	Enabled	ON
4 — Review	—	Click Test Connection; expect "Test event sent successfully"
4 — Review	—	Click Create

Within seconds, the destination's Health pill should show Healthy and counters start incrementing.

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Verifying ingest in Splunk

Run a search like:

index=stratora_audit sourcetype=syslog | head 10

Expected events look like:

<133>1 2026-05-24T12:00:00.000000Z stratora-host stratora 392 login - user=admin resource=session ip=10.0.0.10

Field extractions can be set up via Splunk's field aliases or a custom props.conf / transforms.conf pair targeting the stratora_audit index.

Suggested field extractions

In $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/props.conf:

[syslog]
EXTRACT-stratora_action = stratora\s+\d+\s+(?<stratora_action>\S+)\s+-
EXTRACT-stratora_kv = (?<stratora_user>user=\S+)\s+(?<stratora_resource>resource=\S+)

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Operational notes

• Per-destination isolation: if your Splunk Forwarder goes down, Stratora's other destinations (if any) continue shipping. Splunk's counter accumulates events_dropped_total until the Forwarder recovers.
• Restart drain: Stratora drains in-flight events to Splunk on backend restart.
• Test isolation: Test Connection events are tagged as syslog_destination_test and bypass the audit_logs table — they appear at the Splunk Forwarder but are not part of Stratora's persistent audit history.