ADAudit Plus fails to send logs to Splunk HEC — SSLHandshakeException PKIX path building failed with self-signed cert

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to forward logs from ManageEngine ADAudit Plus to a Splunk HTTP Event Collector (HEC) over HTTPS.

On the Splunk side, HEC is configured with a self-signed certificate.

When ADAudit attempts to send data to HEC, I get the following error:

Error : <splunk-ip> javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target

I did *not* change any certificates — HEC is using its self-signed cert.

I’m wondering what the **recommended** solution is to make ADAudit (or its embedded Java runtime) trust the certificate and successfully send the logs.

**My questions to the community:**

1. Is there a standard / supported way to make ADAudit Plus accept a self-signed certificate from Splunk HEC?

2. Is importing the cert into Java’s cacerts/truststore the typical approach, or is there a configuration in ADAudit / HEC that needs to be adjusted?

3. Have others faced this exact setup (ADAudit → Splunk HEC over HTTPS with self-signed cert), and if so — what worked for you?

Thanks in advance for any advice or shared experiences.