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4.10.13.1 (L1) Ensure 'Boot-Start Driver Initialization Policy' is set to 'Enabled: Good, unknown and bad but critical'

Warning! Audit Deprecated

This audit has been deprecated and will be removed in a future update.

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Information

This policy setting allows you to specify which boot-start drivers are initialized based on a classification determined by an Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver. The Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver can return the following classifications for each boot-start driver:

 - Good : The driver has been signed and has not been tampered with.
 - Bad : The driver has been identified as malware. It is recommended that you do not allow known bad drivers to be initialized.
 - Bad, but required for boot : The driver has been identified as malware, but the computer cannot successfully boot without loading this driver.
 - Unknown : This driver has not been attested to by your malware detection application and has not been classified by the Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver.

If you enable this policy setting you will be able to choose which boot-start drivers to initialize the next time the computer is started.

If your malware detection application does not include an Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver or if your Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver has been disabled, this setting has no effect and all boot-start drivers are initialized.

The recommended state for this setting is: Enabled: Good, unknown and bad but critical

This policy setting helps reduce the impact of malware that has already infected your system.

Solution

To establish the recommended configuration via configuration profiles, set the following Settings Catalog path to Enabled: `Good, unknown and bad but critical.

Administrative Templates\System\Early Launch Antimalware\Boot-Start Driver Initialization Policy

Impact:

None - this is the default behavior.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/21767

Item Details

References: CSCv7|8.3

Plugin: Windows

Control ID: b44f49a1f9f912c5179895d3abcc2ba54eb4188f7ef9b3624b09fb81b2b89ce0