[[secure-monitoring]]
=== Monitoring and security

The {stack} {monitor-features} consist of two components:
an agent that you install on each {es} and Logstash node, and a Monitoring UI
in {kib}. The monitoring agent collects and indexes metrics from the nodes
and you visualize the data through the Monitoring dashboards in {kib}. The agent
can index data on the same {es} cluster, or send it to an external
monitoring cluster.

To use the {monitor-features} with the {security-features} enabled, you need to
{kibana-ref}/using-kibana-with-security.html[set up {kib} to work with the {security-features}]
and create at least one user for the Monitoring UI. If you are using an external
monitoring cluster, you also need to configure a user for the monitoring agent
and configure the agent to use the appropriate credentials when communicating
with the monitoring cluster.

For more information, see:

* <<monitoring-production>>
* {kibana-ref}/monitoring-xpack-kibana.html[Configuring monitoring in {kib}]
* {logstash-ref}/configuring-logstash.html[Configuring monitoring for Logstash nodes]


