Information
Application Insights within Azure act as an Application Performance Monitoring solution providing valuable data into how well an application performs and additional information when performing incident response. The types of log data collected include application metrics, telemetry data, and application trace logging data providing organizations with detailed information about application activity and application transactions. Both data sets help organizations adopt a proactive and retroactive means to handle security and performance related metrics within their modern applications.
Rationale:
Configuring Application Insights provides additional data not found elsewhere within Azure as part of a much larger logging and monitoring program within an organization's Information Security practice. The types and contents of these logs will act as both a potential cost saving measure (application performance) and a means to potentially confirm the source of a potential incident (trace logging). Metrics and Telemetry data provide organizations with a proactive approach to cost savings by monitoring an application's performance, while the trace logging data provides necessary details in a reactive incident response scenario by helping organizations identify the potential source of an incident within their application.
Impact:
Because Application Insights relies on a Log Analytics Workspace, an organization will incur additional expenses when using this service.
NOTE: Nessus has not performed this check. Please review the benchmark to ensure target compliance.
Solution
From Azure Portal
Navigate to Application Insights
Under the Basics tab within the PROJECT DETAILS section, select the Subscription
Select the Resource group
Within the INSTANCE DETAILS, enter a Name
Select a Region
Next to Resource Mode, select Workspace-based
Within the WORKSPACE DETAILS, select the Subscription for the log analytics workspace
Select the appropriate Log Analytics Workspace
Click Next:Tags >
Enter the appropriate Tags as Name, Value pairs.
Click Next:Review+Create
Click Create
From Azure CLI
az monitor app-insights component create --app <app name> --resource-group <resource group name> --location <location> --kind 'web' --retention-time <INT days to retain logs> --workspace <log analytics workspace ID> --subscription <subscription ID>
From PowerShell
New-AzApplicationInsights -Kind 'web' -ResourceGroupName <resource group name> -Name <app insights name> -location <location> -RetentionInDays <INT days to retain logs> -SubscriptionID <subscription ID> -WorkspaceResourceId <log analytics workspace ID>
Default Value:
Application Insights are not enabled by default.