17.2.3 (L1) Ensure 'Audit User Account Management' is set to 'Success and Failure'

Information

This subcategory reports each event of user account management, such as when a user account is created, changed, or deleted; a user account is renamed, disabled, or enabled; or a password is set or changed. If you enable this Audit policy setting, administrators can track events to detect malicious, accidental, and authorized creation of user accounts. Events for this subcategory include:
- 4720: A user account was created.
- 4722: A user account was enabled.
- 4723: An attempt was made to change an account's password.
- 4724: An attempt was made to reset an account's password.
- 4725: A user account was disabled.
- 4726: A user account was deleted.
- 4738: A user account was changed.
- 4740: A user account was locked out.
- 4765: SID History was added to an account.
- 4766: An attempt to add SID History to an account failed.
- 4767: A user account was unlocked.
- 4780: The ACL was set on accounts which are members of administrators groups.
- 4781: The name of an account was changed:
- 4794: An attempt was made to set the Directory Services Restore Mode.
- 5376: Credential Manager credentials were backed up.
- 5377: Credential Manager credentials were restored from a backup.
The recommended state for this setting is: Success and Failure.

Rationale:
Auditing these events may be useful when investigating a security incident.

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 User Account Management

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.

Default Value:
Success.

References:
1. CCE-35499-3

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/14249

Item Details

Category: AUDIT AND ACCOUNTABILITY, IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|AU-12, 800-53|IA-4, CSCv6|16.4, CSCv7|6.3, CSCv7|16.6

Plugin: Windows

Control ID: ede4e3d521121d723456e4080abb667a370b67d83fb8a97f4c231112dfb54e9b