PPS9-00-000700 - The EDB Postgres Advanced Server must integrate with an organization-level authentication/access mechanism providing account management and automation for all users, groups, roles, and any other principals.

Information

Enterprise environments make account management for applications and databases challenging and complex. A manual process for account management functions adds the risk of a potential oversight or other error. Managing accounts for the same person in multiple places is inefficient and prone to problems with consistency and synchronization.

A comprehensive application account management process that includes automation helps to ensure that accounts designated as requiring attention are consistently and promptly addressed.

Examples include, but are not limited to, using automation to take action on multiple accounts designated as inactive, suspended, or terminated, or by disabling accounts located in non-centralized account stores, such as multiple servers. Account management functions can also include: assignment of group or role membership; identifying account type; specifying user access authorizations (i.e., privileges); account removal, update, or termination; and administrative alerts. The use of automated mechanisms can include, for example: using email or text messaging to notify account managers when users are terminated or transferred; using the information system to monitor account usage; and using automated telephone notification to report atypical system account usage.

The DBMS must be configured to automatically utilize organization-level account management functions, and these functions must immediately enforce the organization's current account policy.

Automation may be comprised of differing technologies that when placed together contain an overall mechanism supporting an organization's automated account management requirements.

NOTE: Nessus has provided the target output to assist in reviewing the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

Identify any user that is using 'trust', 'md5', or 'password' as allowable access methods.

> cat <postgresql data directory>/pg_hba.conf | egrep -I '(trust|md5|password)' | grep -v '#'

Document any rows that have 'trust', 'md5', or 'password' specified for the 'METHOD' column and obtain appropriate approval for each user specified in the 'USER' column (i.e., all DBMS managed accounts).

For any users that are not documented and approved as DBMS managed accounts, change the 'METHOD' column to one of the externally managed (not 'trust', 'md5', or 'password') options defined here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/auth-methods.html

(The default path for the postgresql data directory is /var/lib/ppas/9.5/data, but this will vary according to local circumstances.)

Item Details

Audit Name: EDB PostgreSQL Advanced Server OS Linux Audit v2r3

Category: ACCESS CONTROL

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 649bf6176f795e43851ac7c316def710b154b7df2e44ddf89d3df5270f7ba241

Detections

Analytics

PPS9-00-000700 - The EDB Postgres Advanced Server must integrate with an organization-level authentication/access mechanism providing account management and automation for all users, groups, roles, and any other principals.

Information

Solution

See Also

Item Details