STIGhubSTIGhub
STIGsRMF ControlsCompare

STIGhub

A free tool to search and browse the entire DISA STIG library. Saves up to 75% in security compliance research time.

Navigation

  • Browse STIGs
  • Search
  • RMF Controls
  • Compare Versions

Resources

  • About
  • Release Notes
  • VPAT
  • DISA STIG Library
STIGs updated 3 hours ago
Powered by Pylon
© 2026 Beacon Cloud Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.
← Back to Apple macOS 15 (Sequoia) Security Technical Implementation Guide

V-268454

CAT II (Medium)

The macOS system must enable security auditing.

Rule ID

SV-268454r1034302_rule

STIG

Apple macOS 15 (Sequoia) Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R7

CCIs

CCI-000130CCI-000131CCI-000132CCI-000133CCI-000134CCI-000135CCI-000159CCI-001464CCI-001487CCI-001494CCI-001495CCI-001914CCI-001889CCI-001890CCI-003938CCI-002884CCI-000172CCI-004188

Discussion

The information system must be configured to generate audit records. Audit records establish what types of events have occurred, when they occurred, and which users were involved. These records aid an organization in their efforts to establish, correlate, and investigate the events leading up to an outage or attack. The content required to be captured in an audit record varies based on the impact level of an organization's system. Content that may be necessary to satisfy this requirement includes, for example, time stamps, source addresses, destination addresses, user identifiers, event descriptions, success/fail indications, filenames involved, and access or flow control rules invoked. The information system initiates session audits at system startup. NOTE: Security auditing is NOT enabled by default on macOS Sequoia. Satisfies: SRG-OS-000037-GPOS-00015, SRG-OS-000038-GPOS-00016, SRG-OS-000039-GPOS-00017, SRG-OS-000040-GPOS-00018, SRG-OS-000041-GPOS-00019, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00020, SRG-OS-000042-GPOS-00021, SRG-OS-000055-GPOS-00026, SRG-OS-000254-GPOS-00095, SRG-OS-000255-GPOS-00096, SRG-OS-000257-GPOS-00098, SRG-OS-000258-GPOS-00099, SRG-OS-000337-GPOS-00129, SRG-OS-000358-GPOS-00145, SRG-OS-000359-GPOS-00146, SRG-OS-000365-GPOS-00152, SRG-OS-000392-GPOS-00172, SRG-OS-000458-GPOS-00203, SRG-OS-000461-GPOS-00205, SRG-OS-000462-GPOS-00206, SRG-OS-000463-GPOS-00207, SRG-OS-000465-GPOS-00209, SRG-OS-000466-GPOS-00210, SRG-OS-000467-GPOS-00211, SRG-OS-000468-GPOS-00212, SRG-OS-000470-GPOS-00214, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00215, SRG-OS-000471-GPOS-00216, SRG-OS-000472-GPOS-00217, SRG-OS-000473-GPOS-00218, SRG-OS-000474-GPOS-00219, SRG-OS-000475-GPOS-00220, SRG-OS-000476-GPOS-00221, SRG-OS-000477-GPOS-00222, SRG-OS-000755-GPOS-00220

Check Content

Verify the macOS system is configured to enable the auditd service with the following command:

LAUNCHD_RUNNING=$(/bin/launchctl list | /usr/bin/grep -c com.apple.auditd)
AUDITD_RUNNING=$(/usr/sbin/audit -c | /usr/bin/grep -c "AUC_AUDITING")
if [[ $LAUNCHD_RUNNING == 1 ]] && [[ -e /etc/security/audit_control ]] && [[ $AUDITD_RUNNING == 1 ]]; then
  echo "pass"
else
  echo "fail"
fi

If the result is not "pass", this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure the macOS system to enable the auditd service with the following command:

if [[ ! -e /etc/security/audit_control ]] && [[ -e /etc/security/audit_control.example ]];then
  /bin/cp /etc/security/audit_control.example /etc/security/audit_control
fi

/bin/launchctl enable system/com.apple.auditd
/bin/launchctl bootstrap system /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.auditd.plist
/usr/sbin/audit -i