Ensure No Auditing for 'Audit Policy: System: Security State Change' This subcategory reports changes in security state of the system, such as when the security subsystem starts and stops. Events for this subcategory include: - 4608: Windows is starting up. - 4609: Windows is shutting down. - 4616: The system time was changed. - 4621: Administrator recovered system from CrashOnAuditFail. Users who are not administrators will now be allowed to log on. Some auditable activity might not have been recorded. Refer to the Microsoft Knowledgebase article 'Description of security events in Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008' for the most recent information about this setting: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947226. Counter Measure: Enable Audit policy settings that support the organizational security policy for all the computers in your organization. Identify the components that you need for an audit policy that enables your organization to hold users accountable for their actions while using organizational resources and enables IT departments to detect unauthorized activity efficiently and then track those events in log files. Potential 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.

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(1) GPO: Computer ConfigurationWindows SettingsSecurity SettingsAdvanced Audit Policy ConfigurationAudit PoliciesSystemAudit Policy: System: Security State Change