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Permissions for Windows Server Auditing

Before you start creating a monitoring plan to audit your Windows servers (including DNS and DHCP servers), plan for the account you'll use for data collection – it should meet the following requirements. Then you provide this account in the monitoring plan wizard (or in the monitored item settings).

The account used for data collection must meet the following requirements on the target servers:

  • The "Manage auditing and security log" policy must be defined for this account. See the Permissions for Active Directory Auditing topic for additional information.
  • This account must be a member of the local Administrators group.

Assign Permission To Read the Registry Key​

NOTE: This permission is required only if the account selected for data collection isn't a member of the Domain Admins group.

Assign this permission on each domain controller in the audited domain. If your domain contains multiple domain controllers, assign permissions through Group Policy instead.

To assign permissions manually, use the Registry Editor snap-in or the Group Policy Management console.

Assign Permission via the Registry Editor Snap-in​

To assign permission via the Registry Editor snap-in:

Step 1 – On your target server, open Registry Editor: navigate to Start > Run and type "regedit".

Step 2 – In the left pane, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControl Set\Services\EventLog\Security.

Step 3 – Right-click the Security node and select Permissions from the pop-up menu.

Step 4 – Click Add and enter the name of the user that you want to grant permissions to.

Step 5 – Check Allow next to the Read permission.

Assign Permission using the Group Policy Management Console​

To assign permission using the Group Policy Management console:

Step 1 – Open the Group Policy Management console on any domain controller in the target domain: navigate to Start > Windows Administrative Tools (Windows Server 2016/2019) or Administrative Tools (Windows 2012 R2 and below) > Group Policy Management.

Step 2 – In the left pane, navigate to Forest: <forest name> > Domains > <domain name> > Domain Controllers. Right-click the effective domain controllers policy (by default, it is the Default Domain Controllers Policy), and select Edit.

Step 3 – In the Group Policy Management Editor dialog, expand the Computer Configuration node on the left and navigate to Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Registry.

Step 4 – Right-click in the pane and select Add Key.

Step 5 – Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurePipeServers\winreg and click OK.

Step 6 – Click Add and enter the name of the user that you want to grant permissions to and press Enter.

Step 7 – Check Allow next to the "Read" permission and click OK.

In the pop-up window, select Propagate inheritable permissions to all subkeys and click OK.

Repeat steps 4–7 for the following keys:

  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\Security.

Step 8 – Close Group Policy Management console.

Step 9 – Open command prompt and input the gpupdate /force command and press Enter. This updates the group policy.

Step 10 – Enter the repadmin /syncall command and press Enter to replicate GPO changes to other domain controllers.

Step 11 – Ensure that new GPO settings were applied to the domain controllers.