Vulnerability Discussion

Maintaining an audit trail of system activity logs can help identify configuration errors, troubleshoot service disruptions, and analyze compromises that have occurred, as well as detect attacks. Audit logs are necessary to provide a trail of evidence in case the system or network is compromised. Collecting this data is essential for analyzing the security of information assets and detecting signs of suspicious and unexpected behavior.

Security State Change records events related to changes in the security state, such as startup and shutdown of the system.

Satisfies: SRG-OS-000327-GPOS-00127, SRG-OS-000458-GPOS-00203, SRG-OS-000463-GPOS-00207, SRG-OS-000468-GPOS-00212

Check

Security Option "Audit: Force audit policy subcategory settings (Windows Vista or later) to override audit policy category settings" must be set to "Enabled" (WN16-SO-000050) for the detailed auditing subcategories to be effective.

Use the AuditPol tool to review the current Audit Policy configuration:

Open an elevated "Command Prompt" (run as administrator).

Enter "AuditPol /get /category:*".

Compare the AuditPol settings with the following.

If the system does not audit the following, this is a finding.

System >> Security State Change - Success

Fix

Configure the policy value for Computer Configuration >> Windows Settings >> Security Settings >> Advanced Audit Policy Configuration >> System Audit Policies >> System >> "Audit Security State Change" with "Success" selected.