Title

The application must generate audit records when successful/unsuccessful attempts to access categories of information (e.g., classification levels) occur. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident, or identify those responsible for one. Categories of information is information that is identified as being sensitive or requiring additional protection from regular user access. The data is accessed on a need to know basis and has been assigned a category or a classification in order to assign protections and track access. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g., module or policy filter).

Check Content

Review the application documentation and interview the application administrator. Identify where the application logs are stored. Identify any data protections that are required. Identify any categories of data or classification of data. If the application requirements do not call for compartmentalized data and data protection, this requirement is not applicable. Authenticate to the application as a regular user. Using application functionality, attempt to access data that has been assigned to a protected category. Perform two access attempts, one successful and one unsuccessful. Testing this will require obtaining access to test data that has been assigned to a protected category, or having an authorized user access the data for you. Review the log data and ensure both the successful and unsuccessful access attempts are logged. If the application does not generate an audit record when successful and unsuccessful attempts to access categories of information occur, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure the application to create an audit record for both successful and unsuccessful attempts to access protected categories of information.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-222453r879865_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-222453

Group Title: SRG-APP-000494

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.