UTC NTP Setup

apt install -y chrony;
systemctl enable chrony;
systemctl daemon-reload;
systemctl start chrony;

timedatectl set-local-rtc no && timedatectl set-timezone UTC && timedatectl set-ntp true;
chronyc -a makestep;

problems We see with setting someone’s timezone and enabling NTP

  • they may have a specific timezone set for a specific reason.

  • they may not have network/access to be able to reach out to x,y,z NTP - we then don’t want to have to write scripts to test network connectivity and then if/else statements to try each specific NTP and set accordingly :(

  • windows logs (specifically) are not “usually” set to UTC because it is preconfigured to use “local” timezone and not GMT/UTC. Also, most don’t configure the host (after setup) to UTC either.. because they forget or more likely they don’t want UTC to be displayed to the end user in their “clock” – not knowing that the end user clock can be different than the system clock :) except in the case of sysmon.

problems We see with setting the kibana default to UTC

  • many of the reasons mentioned above

  • specifically reason in that lets say windows logs are coming in as EST – people will have to go back 4 hours to see the latest windows logs.