Can I hide user-identifying information in reports?

Reporting FAQ | Web Protection Solutions | v8.4.x, v8.5.x | 29-Apr-2022

There are 2 ways to configure your software to omit user-identifying information from reports:

If you sometimes need to generate reports that contain user information, but sometimes need to generate anonymous reports, use the Anonymous option at the top of the Investigative Reports page in the Forcepoint Security Manager to hide user names and, optionally, source IP addresses temporarily.

If some administrators need access to reports that include user information, but other administrators should never see user information, use delegated administration roles to control reporting access. You can configure roles to grant access to investigative reports, but hide user names in reports.

The most absolute method is to prevent the logging of user names and source IP addresses. In this case, no user-identifying information is recorded in the Log Database, making it impossible for investigative or presentation reports to include the information. See Anonymous logging for instructions.

Anonymous investigative reports

To hide user names in investigative reports, click Anonymous at the top of the Web > Main > Reporting > Investigative Reports page in the Security Manager.

By default, this hides only user names, continuing to show source IP addresses in reports. To also hide source IP addresses:

On the management server machine, open the wse.ini file in a text editor. (By default, this file is located in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Websense\Web Security\webroot\Explorer directory.)

Add the following line under the [explorer] heading:

encryptIP=1

Save and close the file.

Now, any time you click Anonymous, all user-identifying information is hidden.

When you click Anonymous, and then move to a different view of the data, such as detail view or outliers, user names remain hidden in the new report. However, to return to the summary view with the names hidden, you must use the links at the top of the report, not the breadcrumbs in the banner.

Anonymous logging

To prevent Filtering Service from including user names, source IP addresses, or hostnames (Forcepoint Web Security only) in the records that it forwards to Log Server:

Log on to the Forcepoint Security Manager and connect to the Web Security module.

Navigate to the Settings > General > Logging page.

Under Reporting Log Records, clear the check boxes next to one or all of the following options:

Log IP addresses

Log user names

Log hostnames

Click OK to cache your changes, then click Save and Deploy.

If you clear all 3 check boxes, no user-identifying information is saved in the Log Database, and no user-identifying information appears in reports.