Detections
Analytics

4.3 Ensure 'CHECK_POLICY' Option is set to 'ON' for All SQL Authenticated Logins

Warning! Audit Deprecated

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

View Next Audit Version

Information

Applies the same password complexity policy used in Windows to passwords used inside SQL Server.

Ensure SQL authenticated login passwords comply with the secure password policy applied by the Windows Server Benchmark so that they cannot be easily compromised via brute force attack.

Solution

For each <login_name> found by the Audit Procedure, execute the following T-SQL statement:

ALTER LOGIN [<login_name>] WITH CHECK_POLICY = ON;

Note: In the case of AWS RDS do not perform this remediation for the Master account.

Impact:

This is a mitigating recommendation for systems which cannot follow the recommendation to use only Windows Authenticated logins.

Weak passwords can lead to compromised systems. SQL Server authenticated logins will utilize the password policy set in the computer's local policy, which is typically set by the Default Domain Policy setting.

The setting is only enforced when the password is changed. This setting does not force existing weak passwords to be changed.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/24175

Item Details

References: CSCv7|4.4

Plugin: MS_SQLDB

Control ID: 78d8480314e58efb1d8295bf6835bda83cc14688096ac096ce21ead63aae721c