SIP is vital to protecting the integrity of the system as it prevents malicious users and software from making unauthorized and/or unintended modifications to protected files and folders; ensures the presence of an audit record generation capability for defined auditable events for all operating system components; protects audit tools from unauthorized access, modification, and deletion; restricts the root user account and limits the actions that the root user can perform on protected parts of the macOS; and prevents nonprivileged users from granting other users direct access to the contents of their home directories and folders. Note: SIP is enabled by default in macOS. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000051-GPOS-00024, SRG-OS-000054-GPOS-00025, SRG-OS-000057-GPOS-00027, SRG-OS-000058-GPOS-00028, SRG-OS-000059-GPOS-00029, SRG-OS-000062-GPOS-00031, SRG-OS-000080-GPOS-00048, SRG-OS-000122-GPOS-00063, SRG-OS-000138-GPOS-00069, SRG-OS-000256-GPOS-00097, SRG-OS-000257-GPOS-00098, SRG-OS-000258-GPOS-00099, SRG-OS-000259-GPOS-00100, SRG-OS-000278-GPOS-00108, SRG-OS-000350-GPOS-00138
Verify the macOS system is configured to enable SIP with the following command: /usr/bin/csrutil status | /usr/bin/grep -c 'System Integrity Protection status: enabled.' If the result is not "1", this is a finding.
To configure the macOS system to enable SIP, boot into "Recovery" mode, launch "Terminal" from the "Utilities" menu, and run the following command: /usr/bin/csrutil enable