Understand Audit Policies LESSON Security Fundamentals

LESSON 2.4 In this lesson, you will learn:  About audit plans  Security logs  Success and failure events  Auditing settings

Security Fundamentals LESSON 2.4 Anticipatory Set You can use Windows ® security and system logs to record and store collected security events so that you can track key system and network activities to monitor potentially harmful behaviors and to mitigate those risks. You can customize system log events by configuring auditing. List the different “categories of security events” in Windows Server ® 2008 or Windows 7

Security Fundamentals LESSON 2.4 Create an Audit Plan  Before implementing an audit policy you should decide what type of information you want to gain by collecting audit events.  Decide what type of information you want to gain by collecting audit events.  If you are interested in intrusion detection (tracking the attempts of users to gain access to areas for which they are not authorized), you can collect failure audits. o But enabling failure audits can be a risk to your organization. If users attempt to access a resource for which they are not authorized, they can create so many failure audits that the security log becomes full, and the computer cannot collect any more audits.

Security Fundamentals LESSON 2.4 Create an Audit Plan (Continued)  If you are interested in forensics (using the audit log to determine exactly what happens in your organization), you can collect a combination of success and failure audits.  Consider the resources that you have available for collecting and reviewing an audit log o Audit events take up space on your computers, and they take up your time and the time of people in your organization. Do not audit events that do not really interest you.

Security Fundamentals LESSON 2.4 Collect and Archive Security Logs across Your Organization  If an intrusion occurs, isolate and preserve the security log entries. These entries can be valuable during an investigation of the intrusion.  An audit trail can contain information about changes that are made to your computer or to other computers on the network.  If intruders gain administrator rights and permissions, or if administrators abuse their rights and permissions, they can clear the security log, leaving you without a trail of their actions.  If you use a tool that regularly collects and saves security log entries across your organization, even if intruders or administrators clear the local security log, you are more likely to be able to trace the actions of intruders or administrators. Microsoft ® Operations Manager is an example of such a tool.

Security Fundamentals LESSON 2.4 Audit Success and Failure Events in the System Event Category  By auditing success and failure events in the system event category, you can notice unusual activity that may indicate that an intruder is attempting to gain access to your computer or your network.  The number of audits that are generated when this setting is enabled tends to be relatively low, and the quality of information that is gained from the events tends to be relatively high.

Security Fundamentals LESSON 2.4 Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Auditing and FGPP Interview  Hear about Windows Server 2008 AD auditing and FGPP directly from the source! In this interview with Siddharth Bhai, the program manager (PM) for this AD functionality, he gives us a bunch of great information.

Security Fundamentals LESSON 2.4 Auditing Settings on Objects Each object has a set of security information, or security descriptor, attached to it. Part of the security descriptor specifies the groups or users that can access an object and the types of access (permissions) that are granted to those groups or users. This part of the security descriptor is known as a discretionary access control list (DACL). A security descriptor for an object also contains auditing information. This auditing information is known as a system access control list (SACL). More specifically, a SACL specifies the following: The group or user accounts to audit when they access the object The operations to be audited for each group or user, for example, modifying a file A Success or Failure attribute for each access event, based on the permissions that are granted to each group and user in the object's DACL

Security Fundamentals LESSON 2.4 Class Activity  There are nine different kinds of events for which you can specify Audit Policy settings. If you audit any of these kinds of events, Windows records the events in the Security log, which you can find in Event Viewer. 1. Account logon events 2. Account management 3. Directory services access 4. Logon events 5. Object access 6. Policy change 7. Privilege use 8. Process tracking 9. System events

Security Fundamentals LESSON 2.4 Lesson Review  Establishing an organizational computer system audit policy is an important facet of information security.  Configuring audit policy settings that monitor the creation or modification of objects gives you a way to track potential security problems, helps to ensure user accountability, and provides evidence in the event of a security breach. Summarize the importance of auditing