17.2.1 Ensure 'Audit Application Group Management' is set to 'Success and Failure'

Information

This policy setting allows you to audit events generated by changes to application groups such as the following:

Application group is created, changed, or deleted.

Member is added or removed from an application group.

Application groups are utilized by Windows Authorization Manager, which is a flexible framework created by Microsoft for integrating role-based access control (RBAC) into applications. More information on Windows Authorization Manager is available at MSDN - Windows Authorization Manager.

The recommended state for this setting is: Success and Failure.

Rationale:

Auditing events in this category may be useful when investigating an incident.

Impact:

If no audit settings are configured, or if audit settings are too lax on the computers in your organization, security incidents might not be detected or not enough evidence will be available for network forensic analysis after security incidents occur. However, if audit settings are too severe, critically important entries in the Security log may be obscured by all of the meaningless entries and computer performance and the available amount of data storage may be seriously affected. Companies that operate in certain regulated industries may have legal obligations to log certain events or activities.

Solution

To establish the recommended configuration via GP, set the following UI path to Success and Failure:

Computer Configuration\Policies\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Advanced Audit Policy Configuration\Audit Policies\Account Management\Audit Application Group Management

Default Value:

No Auditing.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/3458