Ensure No Auditing for 'Audit Policy: Account Management: Distribution Group Management' This subcategory reports each event of distribution group management, such as when a distribution group is created, changed, or deleted or when a member is added to or removed from a distribution group. If you enable this Audit policy setting, administrators can track events to detect malicious, accidental, and authorized creation of group accounts. Events for this subcategory include: - 4744: A security-disabled local group was created. - 4745: A security-disabled local group was changed. - 4746: A member was added to a security-disabled local group. - 4747: A member was removed from a security-disabled local group. - 4748: A security-disabled local group was deleted. - 4749: A security-disabled global group was created. - 4750: A security-disabled global group was changed. - 4751: A member was added to a security-disabled global group. - 4752: A member was removed from a security-disabled global group. - 4753: A security-disabled global group was deleted. - 4759: A security-disabled universal group was created. - 4760: A security-disabled universal group was changed. - 4761: A member was added to a security-disabled universal group. - 4762: A member was removed from a security-disabled universal group. - 4763: A security-disabled universal group was deleted. 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.

(1) GPO: Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Advanced Audit Policy Configuration\Audit Policies\Account Management\Audit Policy: Account Management: Distribution Group Management