PGS9-00-000500 - PostgreSQL must integrate with an organization-level authentication/access mechanism providing account management and automation for all users, groups, roles, and any other principals.

Warning! Audit Deprecated

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

Information

Enterprise environments make account management for applications and databases challenging and complex. A manual process for account management functions adds the risk of a potential oversight or other error. Managing accounts for the same person in multiple places is inefficient and prone to problems with consistency and synchronization.

A comprehensive application account management process that includes automation helps to ensure that accounts designated as requiring attention are consistently and promptly addressed.

Examples include, but are not limited to, using automation to take action on multiple accounts designated as inactive, suspended, or terminated, or by disabling accounts located in non-centralized account stores, such as multiple servers. Account management functions can also include: assignment of group or role membership; identifying account type; specifying user access authorizations (i.e., privileges); account removal, update, or termination; and administrative alerts. The use of automated mechanisms can include, for example: using email or text messaging to notify account managers when users are terminated or transferred; using the information system to monitor account usage; and using automated telephone notification to report atypical system account usage.

PostgreSQL must be configured to automatically utilize organization-level account management functions, and these functions must immediately enforce the organization's current account policy.

Automation may be comprised of differing technologies that when placed together contain an overall mechanism supporting an organization's automated account management requirements.

Solution

Note: The following instructions use the PGDATA environment variable. See supplementary content APPENDIX-F for instructions on configuring PGDATA.

Integrate PostgreSQL security with an organization-level authentication/access mechanism providing account management for all users, groups, roles, and any other principals.

As the database administrator (shown here as 'postgres'), edit pg_hba.conf authentication file:

$ sudo su - postgres
$ vi ${PGDATA?}/pg_hba.conf

For each PostgreSQL-managed account that is not documented and approved, either transfer it to management by the external mechanism, or document the need for it and obtain approval, as appropriate.

Item Details

Audit Name: DISA STIG PostgreSQL 9.x on RHEL OS v2r3

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 13849768e3a7ed22cc405f4f3897ad9366d32bfc704c7f502b74f1f1d382969f

Detections

Analytics

PGS9-00-000500 - PostgreSQL must integrate with an organization-level authentication/access mechanism providing account management and automation for all users, groups, roles, and any other principals.

Warning! Audit Deprecated

Information

Solution

See Also

Item Details