Settings

Philter has many options to control how it operates. The options and how to configure them are described below.
The configuration for the types of sensitive information that Philter identifies are defined in filter profiles outside of Philter's configuration properties described on this page.
Configuring Philter
Settings File
Philter’s settings file is application.properties. This file is located in Philter’s installation directory, which is most likely /opt/philter. All changes to this files requires Philter to be restarted for the changes to take affect. To restart Philter execute the following commands:
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sudo systemctl restart philter.service
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sudo systemctl restart philter-ner.service
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Using Environment Variables
Properties set via environment variables take precedence over properties set in Philter's settings file.
All of the following properties can also be set as environment variables by prepending PHILTER_ to the property name and changing periods to underscores. For example, the property filter.profiles.directory can be set using the environment variable PHILTER_FILTER_PROFILES_DIRECTORY by:
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export PHILTER_FILTER_PROFILES_DIRECTORY=/profiles/
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Setting or changing an environment variable requires Philter to be restarted. To restart Philter execute the following commands:
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sudo systemctl restart philter.service
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sudo systemctl restart philter-ner.service
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Using environment variables to configure Philter instead of using Philter's settings file can allow for easier configuration management when deploying Philter.
Filter Profiles
Setting
Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
filter.profiles.directory
The directory in which to look for filter profiles.
Any valid directory path.
./profiles/
Span Disambiguation
These values configure Philter's span disambiguation feature to determine the most appropriate type of sensitive information when duplicate spans are identified. In a deployment of multiple Philter instances, you must enable the cache service for span disambiguation to work as expected.
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Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
span.disambiguation.enabled
Whether or not to enable span disambiguation.
true, false
false
Metrics
These values configure how Philter reports metrics during its operations. For more information on the metrics collected and reported see Metrics. Philter can report metrics via JMX, Datadog, and Amazon CloudWatch. You may enable any combination of metrics services, or none of them to disable metrics reporting.
Setting
Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
metrics.prefix
A value used to prefix metric names.
Any value
philter
metrics.hostname
A means for differentiating metrics across multiple instances of Philter.
Any value
None
JMX Metric Reporting
Setting
Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
metrics.jmx.enabled
Enables metrics reporting via JMX.
true, false
false
Prometheus Metric Reporting
Metrics will be published to an HTTP endpoint when enabled. By default, the metrics endpoint is http://philter-ip:9100/metrics. This path can be modified via the settings listed below.
Setting
Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
metrics.prometheus.enabled
Enables metrics reporting via an HTTP endpoint.
true, false
false
metrics.prometheus.port
The port on which the metrics HTTP server listens.
Any valid port number.
9100
metrics.prometheus.metrics
The context at which the metrics HTTP server listens.
Any valid HTTP context.
metrics
Datadog Metric Reporting
Metrics will be published to Datadog when enabled.
Setting
Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
metrics.datadog.enabled
Enables metrics reporting via Datadog.
true, false
false
metrics.datadog.apikey
Your Datadog API key.
Any valid Datadog API key.
None
Amazon CloudWatch Metric Reporting
Metrics will be published to CloudWatch when enabled. The value of metrics.hostname will be used as a dimension for the metrics.
Setting
Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
metrics.cloudwatch.enabled
Enables metrics reporting via AWS CloudWatch.
true, false
false
metrics.cloudwatch.region
The AWS CloudWatch region.
Any valid AWS region name.
us-east-1
metrics.cloudwatch.namespace
The AWS CloudWatch namespace for the metrics.
Any valid CloudWatch Metrics namespace name.
None
AWS CloudWatch Credentials
Philter will look for AWS credentials following the default AWS credentials chain (environment variables, default credentials file, instance profile credentials). When running in AWS using an instance profile via an IAM role is the preferred method. When not possible, using environment variables is recommended and can be set as shown below:
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export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="your-access-key"
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export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="your-secret-key"
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AWS IAM Role
The IAM user or role being used must have PutMetricData permissions. An example policy is shown below.
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{
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    "Version": "2012-10-17",
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    "Statement": [
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        {
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            "Sid": "VisualEditor0",
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            "Effect": "Allow",
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            "Action": [
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                "cloudwatch:PutMetricData"
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            ],
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            "Resource": "*"
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        }
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    ]
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}
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SSL/TLS
By default, Philter is pre-configured for two-way SSL/TLS connections to both Philter's API and Philter's UI. However, client certificates are "wanted" but not "required." This can be changed to require client certificates in Philter's settings (described below under Two-Way SSL/TLS).
One-Way SSL/TLS 
In one-way SSL/TLS, Philter's API is configured to accept connections only over SSL/TLS. This can help prevent a man-in-the-middle attack.
When Philter is deployed via the AWS Marketplace, Microsoft Azure Marketplace, or Google Cloud Marketplace, one-way SSL/TLS will be enabled by default with a self-signed certificate. It is recommended you replace this self-signed certificate with a valid certificate for your organization. When configured, the SSL/TLS listener will be available on the port defined by server.port , which is 8080 by default.
To enable Philter's SSL/TLS listener, provide the following properties:
Setting
Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
server.ssl.key-store-type
The type of keystore.
PKCS12 or JKS
None
server.ssl.key-store
Full path to the keystore file.
File path.
None
server.ssl.key-store-password
The keystore’s password.
A valid password.
None
server.ssl.key-alias
The certificate alias in the keystore.
A valid alias.
None
An example configuration to enable SSL is shown below:
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# SSL certificate settings
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security.require-ssl=true
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server.ssl.key-store-type=PKCS12
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server.ssl.key-store=/opt/philter/ssl/philter.p12
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server.ssl.key-store-password=Password123!
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server.ssl.key-alias=philter
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server.ssl.client-auth=none
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The command that generated the self-signed certificate referenced by the above configuration is:
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keytool -genkeypair -keypass Password123! -dname "CN=philter, O=philter, C=US\ -alias philter -keyalg RSA -keysize 4096 -storepass Password123! -storetype PKCS12 -keystore /opt/philter/ssl/philter.p12 -validity 3650
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Two-Way SSL/TLS
In two-way SSL/TLS connections, both the client and the server verify each other's identity. A certificate authority (CA) generates a server certificate and a client certificate along with the corresponding private keys.
To configure Philter to use two-way SSL/TLS, set the configuration to set server.ssl.client-auth to need and to specify the location of the trust store and the trust store password. (Please contact us for assistance with creating self-signed certificates.)
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# SSL certificate settings
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security.require-ssl=true
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server.ssl.key-store-type=PKCS12
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server.ssl.key-store=/opt/philter/ssl/philter.p12
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server.ssl.key-store-password=Password123!
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server.ssl.key-alias=philter
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server.ssl.client-auth=need
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server.ssl.trust-store=/path/to/truststure.jks
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server.ssl.trust-store-password=changeit
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All clients of the Philter API must now present a valid certificate signed by the same CA as the server certificate to be granted access to Philter's API. 
In the example curl command below to filter text, we are providing the client certificate and the client private key in the API request.
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curl -vvvv -k --cert client.crt --key client.key -H "Content-type: text/plain" "https://localhost:8080/api/filter" --data "George Washington was president and his ssn was 123-45-6789."
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Cache Service
The cache service is required to use consistent anonymization and filter profiles stored in Amazon S3. Philter supports Redis as the backend cache. When Redis is not used, an in-memory cache  is used instead. The in-memory cache is not recommended because all contents will be stored in memory on the local Philter instance.
The cache will contain sensitive information. It is important that you take the necessary precautions to secure the cache itself and all communication between Philter and the cache.
Setting
Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
cache.redis.enabled
Whether or not to use Redis as the cache.
true, false
false
cache.redis.host
The hostname or IP address of the Redis cache.
Any valid Redis endpoint.
None
cache.redis.port
The Redis cache port.
Any valid port.
6379
cache.redis.auth.token
The Redis auth token.
Any valid token.
None
cache.redis.ssl
Whether or not to use SSL for communication with the Redis cache.
true, false
false
The following Redis settings are only required when using a self-signed SSL certificate.
Setting
Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
cache.redis.truststore
The path to the trust store.
Any valid file path.
None
cache.redis.truststore.password
The trust store password.
Any valid file path.
None
cache.redis.keystore
The path to the keystore.
Any valid file path.
None
cache.redis.keystore.password
The keystore password.
Any valid file path.
None
Replacements Store
The locations of sensitive information in text replaced by Philter can optionally be persisted to an Elasticsearch index. The Elasticsearch index can provide a historical reference of how the text was processed. The following settings control if this functionality is enabled and the connection details of the Elasticsearch instance.
This store will not contain sensitive information. It will only contain locations (character start and character end positions) in the input text that Philter identified as sensitive information.
Setting
Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
store.enabled
Whether or not to utilize the backend store for replaced values.
true, false
false
store.elasticsearch.index
The name of the Elasticsearch index to use.
An index name.
philter
store.elasticsearch.host
The hostname or IP address of the Elasticsearch instance.
A hostname or IP address.
None
store.elasticsearch.scheme
The protocol to use to connect to Elasticsearch.
http or https
https
store.elasticsearch.port
The Elasticsearch port.
A valid port number.
443
Advanced Settings
In most cases the settings below do not need changed. Contact us for more information on any of these settings.
Setting
Description
Allowed Values
Default Value
ner.timeout.sec
Controls the timeout in seconds when performing name entity recognition. Longer text may require longer processing times.
An integer value
600
ner.max.idle.connections
The maximum number of idle connections to maintain for the named entity recognition. More connections may improve performance in some cases.
An integer value.
30
ner.keep.alive.duration.ms
The amount of time in milliseconds to keep named entity recognition connections alive. Longer text may require longer processing times.
An integer value.
60