This guide walks you through the process of deploying seeds. It covers creating both manual and automated deployments, planting seeds manually, and setting up integrations with your organisation’s platform. By following these steps, you will learn how to strategically plant seeds in your system, comprehend seed impact ratings, and use integrations to streamline the seed planting and retiring process.
Step 1: Create a manual deployment
Before we begin:
It’s important to note that manual deployments are useful when you need to plant seeds in systems or platforms that do not support automated integration with Seedata.io. By creating a manual deployment, you maintain control over where and when to plant the seeds, which can be beneficial in specific scenarios or when dealing with sensitive data.
Seeds deployed manually cannot auto-expire because they are not directly connected to the Seedata.io platform. As a result, you are responsible for managing their lifecycle, including retiring them when necessary.
Additionally, it’s essential to understand seed impact ratings. Seeds placed in more sensitive locations should be given a higher impact rating, so that related events can be presented with increased priority. For example, a secret folder in your finance area’s SharePoint with tight access controls would represent a high impact (1) as absolutely nobody should be going there, while a public-facing web server would be a low impact (5) as you would expect some casual traffic.
To create a manual deployment, please go to the “Deployments” tab and click “Add new”.
Now you should fill out the deployment prompt accordingly:
- • Seed Type is the type of seed that you want to plant.
- • Destination is the location where you want to plant the seed(s). This can either be a manual download or an integration location.
- • Seed lifespan is the number of days each seed will be left in place, between planting and retiring.
- • Deployment size is the number of seeds that will be in the planted status while the deployment is running.
- • Mute notifications allows you to mute all notifications for the deployment.
- • Run on save allows you to select whether you want the deployment to run after pressing “Save”.
In this example, we are going to deploy an intellectual property report in the format of a DOCX file with a manual download destination.
We will also have the actual deployment run after we press “Save”.
When you’re confident with your configuration based on the explanations above, click “Save”.
Now, it will enter an initialising status, which shouldn’t take too long depending on the size of your deployment.
Feel free to navigate around while waiting for the process to complete.
Once it’s finished initialising, it will enter a “stopped” state. You should now go to the “Seeds” menu, where you will be able to find the newly created seed(s) from the deployment.
Next, you’ll want to click the three dots next to the seed and press “Plant” to open the appropriate prompt.
To obtain your seeded file, enter a suitable location name and description for the planted file, and then click “Download”.
Step 2: Manually plant a seed
When planting seeds manually, choose locations where unauthorised parties are likely to seek access. These locations are often targeted because they contain sensitive information, critical systems, or exploitable vulnerabilities. Here are some interesting places and the reasons they are effective locations for planting seeds:
- • Email inboxes: Plant seeds in important or sensitive emails, particularly those belonging to executives, finance, or HR teams. Attackers often target these inboxes for valuable data or credentials. Seeds can help detect phishing or social engineering attempts.
- • Shared drives: Place seeds in shared folders or network drives accessible by multiple team members. Attackers may target these locations for unauthorised access or data exfiltration. Seeds can help identify such activities.
- • Project management tools: Insert seeds into platforms like Trello, Asana, or Basecamp. These tools often store sensitive information or provide access to resources, making them potential targets for unauthorised users or insider threats. Seeds can help detect such issues.
- • Software repositories: Add seeds to repositories on platforms like GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. These repositories store sensitive data, credentials, or proprietary information. Seeds can help identify unauthorised access, code tampering, or intellectual property theft.
Before planting seeds, consider the risks and implications of each location and the seed’s impact rating to balance detection efficacy and potential exposure. Planting seeds in these locations increases the chances of detecting unauthorised access, allowing your organisation to proactively and effectively respond to potential threats.
Step 3: Create an integration
Integrations establish a direct connection between the Seedata.io platform and other platforms used by your organisation. By configuring an integration, you can plant and retire seeds directly into these platforms without needing to interact with them manually.
To create an integration, first go to the “Settings” menu and ensure you’re on the “Integrations” tab.
For the purposes of this guide, we’ll use a Google Drive integration. Now, you’ll want to click “Install”.
Please note if you’re using a Google Drive integration, you should make sure there are pre-existing directories on your drive, so that we can plant seeds correctly.
Enter a suitable integration name as shown below and click “Ok”.
Now, you will see an authorisation page asking you to sign in to your chosen integration’s account. Please proceed with this step.
Next, you will receive a pop-up in your browser asking you to authorise our application and grant us permission. Please do so, as this is necessary for proper integration.
You will encounter a few verification pages; please continue to proceed where possible.
Now, you should see the integration that you chose to install under the “Integrations” tab, as displayed below.
Step 3: Create an automated deployment
Automated deployments enable you to plant and retire seeds automatically, utilising the integrations you have created.
To create an automated deployment, please go to the “Deployments” page and click the “Add New” button.
Now you should fill out the deployment prompt accordingly:
- • Seed Type is the type of seed that you want to plant.
- • Destination is the location where you want to plant the seed(s). This can either be a manual download or an integration location.
- • Seed lifespan is the number of days each seed will be left in place, between planting and retiring.
- • Deployment size is the number of seeds that will be in the planted status while the deployment is running.
- • Mute notifications allows you to mute all notifications for the deployment.
- • Run on save allows you to select whether you want the deployment to run after pressing “Save”.
For this example, we will deploy an intellectual property report in DOCX format for automatic deployment via an integration destination. We will set a seed lifespan of 3 days and a deployment size of 2 seeds. The deployment will start running as soon as we click “Save.”
The deployment status will initially be in an “initialising” state. You can leave the page while the deployment takes place. Eventually, it will change to “running”, indicating that the deployment is active.
To verify that the seeds have been planted, click on the “Seeds” tab. In our case, since we specified 2 seeds, we can see them on the page.
Clicking on any of the seeds will reveal their integration location. For example, seed “tiffanie-sari-5818” was part of our automatic deployment and has been planted in our Google Drive in a directory called “example/”.
For final confirmation, here’s what both of the seeds look like at the integration’s endpoint (Google Drive in this case).
