Extracting your data
Last updated 2024-08-22
IMPORTANT
This guide only applies to Next-Gen WAF customers with access to the Next-Gen WAF control panel.
Next-Gen WAF stores requests that contain attacks and anomalies, with some qualifications. If you would like to extract this data in bulk for ingestion into your own systems, we offer a request feed API endpoint which makes available a feed of recent data, suitable to be called by (for example) an hourly cron.
This functionality is typically used by security operation center (SOC) teams to automatically import data into security information and event management (SIEM) solutions such as Datadog, ELK, and other commercial systems.
Data extraction vs searching
We have a separate API endpoint for searching request data. Its use case is for finding requests that meet certain criteria, as opposed to bulk data extraction:
Searching | Data Extraction |
---|---|
Search using full query syntax | Returns all requests, optionally filtered by signals |
Limited to 1,000 requests | Returns all requests |
Window: up to 7 days at a time | Window: past 24 hours |
Retention: 30 days | 24 hours |
Time span restrictions
The following restrictions are in effect when using this endpoint:
- The
until
parameter has a maximum of five minutes in the past. This is to allow our data pipeline sufficient time to process incoming requests - see below. - The
from
parameter has a minimum value of 24 hours and five minutes in the past. - Both the
from
anduntil
parameters must fall on full minute boundaries. - Both the
from
anduntil
parameters require Unix timestamps with second level detail (e.g.,1445437680
).
Delayed data
A five-minute delay is enforced to build in time to collect and aggregate data across all of your running agents, and then ingest, analyze, and augment the data in our systems. Our five-minute delay is a tradeoff between data that is both timely and complete.
Pagination
This endpoint returns data either 1,000 requests at a time or by the size specified in the limit
query parameter. If the time span specified contains more than 1,000 requests (default) or more than defined by the limit
parameter, a next
URL will be provided to retrieve the next batch. Each next
URL is valid for one minute from the time it's generated.
Retrieved data can vary in size, sometimes greatly. To avoid exceeding URL size limitations, send the next
parameter and its value as POST parameters in a POST request using a Content-Type of application/x-www-form-urlencoded
.
Sort order
As a result of our data warehousing implementation, the data you get back from this endpoint will be complete for the time span specified, but is not guaranteed to be sorted. Once all data for the given time span has been accumulated, it can be sorted using the timestamp
field, if necessary.
Rate limiting
Limits for concurrent connections to this endpoint:
- Two per site (also known as a workspace)
- Five per corp (also known as an account)
Example usage
A common way to use this endpoint is to set up a cron that runs at 5 minutes past each hour and fetches the previous full hour's worth of data. In the example below, we calculate the previous full hour's start and end timestamps and use them to call the API.
Python
1import requests2import os3import json4import calendar5from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone6
7# Set up environment variables8NGWAF_EMAIL = os.getenv('NGWAF_USER_EMAIL')9NGWAF_TOKEN = os.getenv('NGWAF_TOKEN')10NGWAF_CORP = os.getenv('CORP_NAME')11NGWAF_SITE = os.getenv('SITE_NAME')12
13if not NGWAF_EMAIL or not NGWAF_TOKEN or not NGWAF_CORP or not NGWAF_SITE:14 raise EnvironmentError("Please set NGWAF_EMAIL, NGWAF_TOKEN, NGWAF_CORP, and NGWAF_SITE environment variables.")15
16# Base URL for the API17base_url = 'https://dashboard.signalsciences.net/api/v0'18
19# Set up headers with authentication20headers = {21 'x-api-user': NGWAF_EMAIL,22 'x-api-token': NGWAF_TOKEN23}24
25# Calculate UTC timestamps for the previous full hour26until_time = datetime.now(timezone.utc).replace(minute=0, second=0, microsecond=0)27from_time = until_time - timedelta(hours=1)28until_time = calendar.timegm(until_time.utctimetuple())29from_time = calendar.timegm(from_time.utctimetuple())30
31# Set up the initial URL for the GET request32get_url = f'{base_url}/corps/{NGWAF_CORP}/sites/{NGWAF_SITE}/feed/requests?from={from_time}&until={until_time}'33
34# Debugging: print the URL and timestamps35print(f"Fetching data from: {get_url}")36print(f"from_time: {from_time}, until_time: {until_time}")37
38def fetch_paginated_data(url):39 data_list = []40 while url:41 # Make the initial GET request42 response_raw = requests.get(url, headers=headers)43 if response_raw.status_code != 200:44 raise RuntimeError(f"Failed to fetch data from {url}. Status Code: {response_raw.status_code}")45 46 response = response_raw.json()47 data_list.extend(response.get('data', []))48 49 next_uri = response.get('next', {}).get('uri', '')50 if not next_uri:51 break52
53 # Extract the next parameter from the URI54 next_value = next_uri.split('next=')[-1]55
56 # Prepare the POST request for pagination57 post_url = f'{base_url}/corps/{NGWAF_CORP}/sites/{NGWAF_SITE}/feed/requests'58 post_data = {'next': next_value}59 headers['Content-Type'] = 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' # Add the necessary header60 post_response_raw = requests.post(post_url, headers=headers, data=post_data)61 if post_response_raw.status_code != 200:62 raise RuntimeError(f"Failed to fetch paginated data from {post_url}. Status Code: {post_response_raw.status_code}")63 64 post_response = post_response_raw.json()65 data_list.extend(post_response.get('data', []))66 67 next_uri = post_response.get('next', {}).get('uri', '')68 if not next_uri:69 break70
71 return data_list72
73# Fetch data74data = fetch_paginated_data(get_url)75
76# Output the data or save to a file, etc.77print(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
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