Getting Started

This article describes how to gain secure access and log in to your Brinqa Platform, the different tabs and menus in your Brinqa Platform, how to edit the list view columns, and how to export and download your list views.

Configure secure access to Brinqa

Before you can begin ingesting data, you must configure secure access to your Brinqa Platform. This involves two steps:

1. Whitelisting a select group of core users' external IP addresses for local authentication. This helps to ensure that only authorized users can access the Brinqa Platform from trusted devices.

2. Collaborating with your Single Sign-On (SSO) provider to obtain metadata files (sp.xml and idp.xml). The metadata files are necessary to enable SSO authentication in conjunction with Brinqa and ensures that users can access the Brinqa Platform securely.

Whitelisting users or groups

For an added security measure, you should provide a whitelist of all external IP addresses to your Brinqa Customer Success Manager (CSM) for users who require access to your Brinqa Platform. This ensures secure access for authorized users. Alternatively, the Brinqa team can make your Brinqa Platform public for a short period of time to facilitate validation.

To whitelist individual users or a group of users, follow these steps:

1. Provide your Brinqa CSM with the external IP addresses of the users you want to have access to your Brinqa Platform.

2. Brinqa verifies if the specified users exist in your Brinqa Platform. If any users do not exist, your Brinqa CSM will create them for you.

3. Brinqa creates a whitelist and updates the authentication methods for those users in your Brinqa Platform.

4. The specified users receive an email with password reset instructions.

SSO authentication

After Brinqa whitelists your specified IP addresses, you must now obtain the necessary metadata files (sp.xml and idp.xml) to enable SSO authentication.

For SSO authentication enablement, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to https://<YourCompanyName>.brinqa.net/sp.xml to obtain the Service Provider (sp.xml) file required by your SSO administrator.

   • The sp.xml file contains information about the Brinqa Platform. Your SSO administrator uses this file to configure the connection between your organization's SSO solution (IdP) and the Brinqa Platform (SP).

2. Request your SSO administrator to generate an Identity Provider (idp.xml) file and email a copy of the idp.xml file to your Brinqa CSM directly.

   • The idp.xml file is the Identity Provider metadata file generated by your SSO administrator. The file contains information about your organization's SSO solution, such as SSO endpoints and public keys for signing and encrypting messages. Your Brinqa CSM uses this file to configure the connection between the Brinqa Platform (SP) and your organization's SSO solution (IdP).

3. The Brinqa team enables SSO in your Brinqa Platform and works with you to ensure a successful login.

By exchanging these metadata files (sp.xml and idp.xml), both your Brinqa CSM and SSO administrator can securely establish trust and enable SSO authentication for accessing your Brinqa Platform.

Logging in to Brinqa

To log in to your Brinqa Platform from a web browser, follow these steps:

1. Enter the URL of your Brinqa Platform in any web browser. The welcome page displays. The base URL for each Brinqa Platform has the following default format: https://<YourCompanyName>.brinqa.net.

   • If your Brinqa Platform uses SSO, you can use an external identity provider such as Google or Okta to authenticate.

   • If your Brinqa Platform does not use SSO, enter your user name or email address, and then your password.

2. Click Log in.

note

These steps assume that you have already worked with your Brinqa CSM to ensure that your login credentials are correct and you can successfully access the Brinqa Platform. If you have not yet obtained your credentials or need any assistance, consult your assigned Brinqa CSM.

Brinqa user interface

The Brinqa user interface (UI) is the main way to interact with menus and pages in your instance. Since the Brinqa UI is customizable, the exact menus in your Brinqa Platform may vary. See the Navigation Menu Items for reference.

Most of the pages in the Brinqa UI display a list view of your data. You can search through the records to limit what's displayed, and then click each item to view more details. You can also edit the list view columns to display more or fewer columns, select multiple items at once to perform bulk actions, or export the list view.

Navigation menu items

Your Brinqa Platform contains several pages or modules in the navigation menu. The following table describes the different items you may see in the navigation menu:

Item	Description
Home	Displays the homepage of your Brinqa Platform.
Dashboard	Displays the default dashboard for specific topics pertaining to your data. For example, Asset management, Findings counts and trends, SLA compliance, and more. You can modify the dashboard to fit the needs of your organization.
Inventory	Displays a list view of your assets retrieved from data integration. Hold the pointer over Inventory to display and choose from different Inventory categories, including Assets, Apps, Cloud, Network, and Human Resources.
Clusters	Displays a container of your clusters. Hold the pointer over Clusters to display and choose from different cluster types, including Assets, Finding Definitions, and Ownership.
Findings	Displays a list view of your findings retrieved from data integration and data orchestration.
Explore	A global search for all your data and displays results in a graph or list view. You must enter your search using the Brinqa query language (BQL).
Remediation	Displays a list view of your remediation efforts. Hold the pointer over Remediation to display and choose from different Remediation categories, including Tickets, Sprints, and Requests.
Automation	Displays a list view of your automations.
Analytics	Displays a list view of your reports.
Integrations	Hold the pointer over Integrations to display and choose from your configured data integrations, access the connector store, or view or create data servers.
Notifications	Displays notifications in your instance.
Apps	Switch to different apps in your instance.
Administration	Access the Administration menu, including user administration, views, data models, risk factors, SLA definitions, and more.
Help	Access the Brinqa documentation, contact the Brinqa Service Desk, or raise an issue by sending an email to support@brinqa.com. Click About to find out the build and version number, host IP address, host name, and uptime of your Brinqa Platform.
Account	Edit your user information, change your password, view exports, or log out of your account.

Bulk actions

The Brinqa UI supports bulk actions. You can perform certain actions to one or more selections at the same time, as opposed to performing the same action to individual records over and over.

For example, you can navigate to Findings and select one or more of the findings in the list view, and then click the Select an action menu to choose from the available actions to apply to your selected records. Actions include: create an exception request, create a risk acceptance request, or create a false positive request.

Edit list view columns

You can customize what columns are displayed on the page by clicking Select columns under the BQL button.

You can select additional columns or remove some columns. For example, the Findings page displays a default set of columns. If you want to add Risk score to the Findings page, follow these steps:

1. Click the Select columns menu.

2. Select Risk score.

3. Click Close.

Risk score displays on the Findings page.

Export and download list views

You can export and download list views to share with others or edit and view in a third party spreadsheet application.

To export and download a list view, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to a list view page. For example, Inventory > All assets.

2. Click Export . A window appears.

3. Enter a name for the export.

4. For Include, select either Displayed attributes or All exportable attributes.

5. Click Export. The following message appears on the lower-left corner: "Data will be generated and it will be available on the Export page."

note

The export does not download to your local storage directly, as large datasets can take a long time to generate. You will receive an email with a link to download the export.

6. To download on the Export page, Click Account and then Exports.

7. Click the name of the export. A new page appears.

8. Click Download. The .csv file downloads to your local storage.