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2.4.1.1 Ensure cron daemon is enabled and active

Information

The cron daemon is used to execute batch jobs on the system.

While there may not be user jobs that need to be run on the system, the system does have maintenance jobs that may include security monitoring that have to run, and cron is used to execute them.

Solution

- IF - cron is installed on the system:

Run the following commands to unmask, enable, and start cron :

# systemctl unmask "$(systemctl list-unit-files | awk '$1~/^crond?\.service/{print $1}')"
# systemctl --now enable "$(systemctl list-unit-files | awk '$1~/^crond?\.service/{print $1}')"

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/24330

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT, IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|CM-1, 800-53|CM-2, 800-53|CM-6, 800-53|CM-7, 800-53|IA-5

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: d02b2a2953d0aafa2cf127c099c9273665bceaa5051bcd6f4117e2aa084136b4