Security Onion 2.4.160 is now available and includes Playbooks and Guided Analysis to help you more quickly triage and respond to alerts! Security Onion Pro customers will also have access to our new MCP Server and Security Onion App for Splunk!
Playbooks and Guided Analysis
Have you ever had an alert and were unsure of what to do next? In this release, when you expand an alert you'll see a new tab called Guided Analysis. This leverages Playbooks to show you plays associated with the alert. These plays include questions which help guide your investigation. Each question has an associated query and the results of that query will be automatically displayed to help you answer the question. This makes you faster and more efficient than ever before!
If you'd like to see this in action, take a look at the Sneak Peek video we released last week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLGRB3PxB-o
Playbooks implements the the Human-Centered Investigation Playbook, a standard developed by Chris Sanders. You can read more about it here:
https://chrissanders.org/2025/06/human-centered-playbooks/
https://chrissanders.org/hcip/Human-Centered%20Playbook%20Standard%20v1.0.pdf
This release includes a number of hand-written playbooks that are used at the detection engine (NIDS | Sigma | YARA) and category (eg "ET MALWARE") level. We have also used AI to generate individual Playbooks for all ETOPEN NIDS rules (58k). If you see an issue with one, please reach out and let us know.
MCP Server
Enterprise customers utilizing their own AI/LLM platform can now interface that platform directly to their Security Onion grid by utilizing the Security Onion Model Context Protocol (MCP) server.
The MCP server gives AI the ability to query alerts, playbooks, events, etc. which provides the LLM with additional information needed to make informed decisions. This functionality utilizes the Security Onion Connect API, so a valid Security Onion Pro license is required.
For more information, please see the documentation:
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/mcp.html
Security Onion App for Splunk
If you use Splunk, then you may be interested in the new Security Onion App for Splunk. This app uses the Security Onion Connect API to allow Splunk to integrate into our platform. Since it uses the Connect API, a valid Security Onion Pro license is required.
Please note that the Security Onion App for Splunk is not officially supported at this time.
You can read more in our documentation:
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/splunk.html
Release Notes
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/release-notes.html#changes
Known Issues
For a list of known issues, please see:
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/release-notes.html#known-issues
About Security Onion
Security Onion is a free and open platform built by defenders for defenders. It includes network visibility, host visibility, intrusion detection honeypots, log management, and case management.
For network visibility, we offer signature based detection via Suricata, rich protocol metadata and file extraction using your choice of either Zeek or Suricata, full packet capture, and file analysis. For host visibility, we offer the Elastic Agent which provides data collection, live queries via osquery, and centralized management using Elastic Fleet. Intrusion detection honeypots based on OpenCanary can be added to your deployment for even more enterprise visibility. All of these logs flow into Elasticsearch and we’ve built our own user interfaces for alerts, dashboards, threat hunting, case management, and grid management.
Security Onion has been downloaded over 2 million times and is being used by security teams around the world to monitor and defend their enterprises. Our easy-to-use Setup wizard allows you to build a distributed grid for your enterprise in minutes!
Documentation
You can find our online documentation here:
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/
Documentation is always a work in progress. If you find documentation that needs to be updated, please let us know as described in the Feedback section below.
New Installations
If this is your first time installing Security Onion 2.4, then we highly recommend starting with an IMPORT installation as shown at:
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/first-time-users.html
Once you’re comfortable with your IMPORT installation, then you can move on to more advanced installations as shown at:
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/architecture.html
Existing 2.4 Installations
If you have an existing Security Onion 2.4 installation, you can update to the latest version using soup:
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/soup.html
Before updating your production deployment, we highly recommend testing the upgrade process on a test deployment that closely matches your production deployment if possible. This is especially important for releases that update components like Salt and Elastic.
2.3 EOL
As a reminder, Security Onion 2.3 reached End Of Life (EOL) on April 6, 2024:
https://blog.securityonion.net/2023/10/6-month-eol-notice-for-security-onion-23.html
Thanks
Lots of love went into this release!
Special thanks to all our folks working so hard to make this release happen!
- Josh Brower
- Jason Ertel
- Corey Ogburn
- Josh Patterson
- Mike Reeves
- Jorge Reyes
- Matthew Wright
Questions, Problems, and Feedback
If you have any questions or problems relating to Security Onion 2.4, please use the 2.4 category at our Discussions site:
https://github.com/Security-Onion-Solutions/securityonion/discussions/categories/2-4
Security Onion Pro
We recently celebrated 10 years in business by announcing Security Onion Pro:
https://blog.securityonion.net/2024/07/celebrating-10-years-of-security-onion.html
Security Onion Pro includes many enterprise features that folks have been asking for:
- Active Query Management
- External API
- Open ID Connect (OIDC)
- Data at Rest Encryption
- FIPS for the OS
- DoD STIG for the OS
- External Notifications in SOC
- Time Tracking inside of Cases
- Guaranteed Message Delivery
- Manager of Managers
- MCP Server
- Security Onion App for Splunk
You can read more about these enterprise features at:
https://securityonion.com/proTraining
Need training? Start with our free Security Onion Essentials training and then take a look at some of our other official Security Onion training!
https://securityonion.net/training
Security Onion Solutions Hardware Appliances
We know Security Onion's hardware needs, and our appliances are the perfect match for the platform. Leave the hardware research, testing, and support to us, so you can focus on what's important for your organization. Not only will you have confidence that your Security Onion deployment is running on the best-suited hardware, you will also be supporting future development and maintenance of the Security Onion project!
https://securityonion.com/hardware
Cloud Installations
For new Security Onion 2 installations in the cloud, this new version will soon be available on the AWS, Azure, and GCP marketplaces!
AWS Marketplace and Documentation:
https://securityonion.net/aws/?ref=_ptnr_soc_blog_250625
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/cloud-amazon.html
Azure Marketplace and documentation:
https://securityonion.net/azure
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/cloud-azure.html
GCP Marketplace and documentation:
https://securityonion.net/google
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/cloud-google.html
Screenshot Tour
If you want the quickest and easiest way to try out Security Onion 2.4, just follow the screenshots below to install an Import node. This can be done in a minimal VM with only 4GB RAM! For more information, please see:
https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/first-time-users.html
