Microsoft Exchange 2019 Mailbox Server Security Technical Implementation Guide
Rules, Groups, and Values defined within the XCCDF Benchmark
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The Exchange email diagnostic log level must be set to the lowest level.
Log files help establish a history of activities and can be useful in detecting attack attempts or determining tuning adjustments to improve availability. Diagnostic logging, however, characteristi...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange audit record parameters must be set.
Log files help establish a history of activities and can be useful in detecting attack attempts. This item declares the fields that must be available in the audit log file to adequately research ev...Rule Low Severity -
The RBAC role for audit log management must be defined and restricted.
The RBAC role for the audit log management "Audit Log Role" should be defined in the Organizational or Enterprise Domain Security Plan (EDSP) to define the necessary personnel that are required to ...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange email subject line logging must be disabled.
Log files help establish a history of activities and can be useful in detecting attack attempts or determining tuning adjustments to improve availability. When "message tracking" is enabled, only t...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange message tracking logging must be enabled.
A message tracking log provides a detailed log of all message activity as messages are transferred to and from a computer running Exchange. If events are not recorded, it may be difficult or impos...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange circular logging must be disabled.
Logging provides a history of events performed and can also provide evidence of tampering or attack. Failure to create and preserve logs adds to the risk that suspicious events may go unnoticed and...Rule Low Severity -
Exchange queue monitoring must be configured with threshold and action.
Monitors are automated "process watchers" that respond to performance changes and can be useful in detecting outages and alerting administrators where attention is needed. Exchange has built-in mon...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange must protect audit data against unauthorized read access.
Log files help establish a history of activities and can be useful in detecting attack attempts or determining tuning adjustments to improve availability. Audit log content must always be considere...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange must protect audit data against unauthorized deletion.
Log files help establish a history of activities and can be useful in detecting attack attempts or determining tuning adjustments to improve availability. Audit log content must always be considere...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange audit data must be on separate partitions.
Log files help establish a history of activities and can be useful in detecting attack attempts or determining tuning adjustments to improve availability. Audit log content must always be considere...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange local machine policy must require signed scripts.
Scripts often provide a way for attackers to infiltrate a system, especially scripts downloaded from untrusted locations. By setting machine policy to prevent unauthorized script executions, unanti...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange Send Fatal Errors to Microsoft must be disabled.
It is detrimental for applications to provide, or install by default, functionality exceeding requirements or mission objectives. These unnecessary capabilities or services are often overlooked and...Rule Medium Severity -
The Exchange Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) service must be disabled.
POP3 is not approved for use within the DOD. It uses a clear-text-based user name and password and does not support the DOD standard for PKI for email access. User name and password could easily be...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange internet-facing send connectors must specify a smart host.
When identifying a "Smart Host" for the email environment, a logical Send connector is the preferred method. A Smart Host acts as an internet-facing concentrator for other email servers. Appropria...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange mail quota settings must not restrict receiving mail.
Mail quota settings control the maximum sizes of a user's mailbox and the system's response if these limits are exceeded. Mailbox data that is not monitored against a quota increases the risk of ma...Rule Low Severity -
Exchange Message size restrictions must be controlled on Receive connectors.
Email system availability depends in part on best practice strategies for setting tuning configurations. For message size restrictions, multiple places exist to set or override inbound or outbound ...Rule Low Severity -
The Exchange Receive Connector Maximum Hop Count must be 60.
Email system availability depends in part on best practice strategies for setting tuning configurations. This setting controls the maximum number of hops (email servers traversed) a message may tak...Rule Low Severity -
The Exchange global outbound message size must be controlled.
Email system availability depends in part on best practice strategies for setting tuning configurations. Message size limits should be set to 10 MB at most but often are smaller, depending on the o...Rule Low Severity -
The Exchange Outbound Connection Limit per Domain Count must be controlled.
Email system availability depends in part on best practice strategies for setting tuning configurations. This configuration controls the maximum number of simultaneous outbound connections from a d...Rule Low Severity -
The Exchange Outbound Connection Timeout must be 10 minutes or less.
Email system availability depends in part on best practice strategies for setting tuning configurations. This configuration controls the number of idle minutes before the connection is dropped. It ...Rule Low Severity -
Exchange internal receive connectors must not allow anonymous connections.
This control is used to limit the servers that may use this server as a relay. If a Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) sender does not have a direct connection to the internet (for example, an a...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange must have anti-spam filtering installed.
Originators of spam messages are constantly changing their techniques to defeat spam countermeasures; therefore, spam software must be constantly updated to address the changing threat. A manual up...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange must have anti-spam filtering configured.
Originators of spam messages are constantly changing their techniques to defeat spam countermeasures; therefore, spam software must be constantly updated to address the changing threat. A manual up...Rule Medium Severity -
The Exchange Global Recipient Count Limit must be set.
Email system availability depends in part on best practice strategies for setting tuning configurations. The Global Recipient Count Limit field is used to control the maximum number of recipients t...Rule Low Severity -
The Exchange malware scanning agent must be configured for automatic updates.
Antimalware protection in Exchange Server 2019 helps combat viruses and spyware in an email messaging environment. Viruses infect other programs and data, and they spread throughout computer lookin...Rule Medium Severity -
Role-Based Access Control must be defined for privileged and nonprivileged users.
Role Based Access Control (RBAC) is the permissions model used in Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, 2016, and 2019. With RBAC, there is no need to modify and manage access control lists (ACLs), which...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange services must be documented, and unnecessary services must be removed or disabled.
Unneeded but running services offer attackers an enhanced attack profile, and attackers are constantly watching to discover open ports with running services. By analyzing and disabling unneeded ser...Rule Medium Severity -
The Exchange email application must not share a partition with another application.
In the same way that added security layers can provide a cumulative positive effect on security posture, multiple applications can provide a cumulative negative effect. A vulnerability and subseque...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange must not send nondelivery reports to remote domains.
Attackers can use automated messages to determine whether a user account is active, in the office, traveling, and so on. An attacker might use this information to conduct future attacks. Ensure tha...Rule Medium Severity -
The Exchange SMTP automated banner response must not reveal server details.
Automated connection responses occur as a result of FTP or Telnet connections when connecting to those services. They report a successful connection by greeting the connecting client and stating th...Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange must provide mailbox databases in a highly available and redundant configuration.
Exchange Server mailbox databases and any data contained in those mailboxes should be protected. This can be accomplished by configuring Mailbox servers and databases for high availability and site...Rule Medium Severity -
The application must protect the confidentiality and integrity of transmitted information.
Without protection of the transmitted information, confidentiality and integrity may be compromised since unprotected communications can be intercepted and either read or altered. This requirement...Rule High Severity -
Exchange must have the most current, approved Cumulative Update installed.
Failure to install the most current Exchange Cumulative Update (CU) leaves a system vulnerable to exploitation. Current CUs correct known security and system vulnerabilities.Rule Medium Severity -
Exchange must be configured in accordance with the security configuration settings based on DOD security configuration or implementation guidance, including STIGs, NSA configuration guides, CTOs, and DTMs.
Configuring Exchange to implement organization-wide security implementation guides and security checklists ensures compliance with federal standards and establishes a common security baseline acros...Rule Medium Severity
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