Tutorial GPO - Audit logon success and failure [ Step by step ]

Would you like to learn how to configure a group policy to audit the logon success and failure? In this tutorial, we will show you how to configure the logon audit feature using a GPO.

• Windows 2012 R2
• Windows 2016
• Windows 2019
• Windows 10
• Windows 7

Equipment list

The following section presents the list of equipment used to create this tutorial.

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Tutorial GPO – Audit logon success and failure

On the domain controller, open the group policy management tool.

Create a new group policy.

Enter a name for the new group policy.

In our example, the new GPO was named: MY-GPO.

On the Group Policy Management screen, expand the folder named Group Policy Objects.

Right-click your new Group Policy Object and select the Edit option.

On the group policy editor screen, expand the Computer configuration folder and locate the following item.

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Access the folder to Audit logon and logoff.

Edit the configuration item named Audit logon.

Enable the options to audit logon successful and failed attempts.

Edit the configuration item named Audit logoff.

Enable the options to audit logoff successful and failed attempts.

Optionally, enable the configuration item named Audit Other Logon, Logoff Events.

This option will enable the audit of screen lock and unlock, RDP connections and RDP disconnects.

To save the group policy configuration, you need to close the Group Policy editor.

Congratulations! You have finished the GPO creation.

Tutorial GPO – Audit logon events

On the Group policy management screen, you need to right-click the Organizational Unit desired and select the option to link an existent GPO.

In our example, we are going to link the group policy named MY-GPO to the root of the domain.

After applying the GPO you need to wait for 10 or 20 minutes.

During this time the GPO will be replicated to other domain controllers.

On a remote computer, start an elevated Powershell command-line.

Verify the advanced logon security audit policy settings.

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Here is the command output.

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List failed logon attempts.

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Here is the command output.

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ProviderName: Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing

TimeCreated                     Id LevelDisplayName Message
-----------                     -- ---------------- -------
3/30/2021 4:17:09 AM          4625 Information      An account failed to log on....
3/30/2021 3:39:31 AM          4625 Information      An account failed to log on....
3/29/2021 7:19:26 AM          4625 Information      An account failed to log on....
3/29/2021 7:11:18 AM          4625 Information      An account failed to log on....
3/29/2021 7:09:05 AM          4625 Information      An account failed to log on....
3/29/2021 7:08:44 AM          4625 Information      An account failed to log on....
3/29/2021 6:58:03 AM          4625 Information      An account failed to log on....
3/29/2021 6:48:43 AM          4625 Information      An account failed to log on....
3/29/2021 6:47:22 AM          4625 Information      An account failed to log on....
3/29/2021 6:44:38 AM          4625 Information      An account failed to log on....

Get details from the last failed logon attempt.

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Here is the command output.

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An account failed to log on.

Subject:
	Security ID:		S-1-0-0
	Account Name:		-
	Account Domain:		-
	Logon ID:		0x0

Logon Type:			3

Account For Which Logon Failed:
	Security ID:		S-1-0-0
	Account Name:		testuser01
	Account Domain:		.

Failure Information:
	Failure Reason:		Unknown user name or bad password.
	Status:			0xC000006D
	Sub Status:		0xC0000064

Process Information:
	Caller Process ID:	0x0
	Caller Process Name:	-

Network Information:
	Workstation Name:	TV01
	Source Network Address:	-
	Source Port:		-

Detailed Authentication Information:
	Logon Process:		NtLmSsp 
	Authentication Package:	NTLM
	Transited Services:	-
	Package Name (NTLM only):	-
	Key Length:		0

This event is generated when a logon request fails. It is generated on the computer where access was attempted.

The Subject fields indicate the account on the local system which requested the logon. This is most commonly a service such as the Server service, or a local process such as Winlogon.exe or Services.exe.

The Logon Type field indicates the kind of logon that was requested. The most common types are 2 (interactive) and 3 (network).

The Process Information fields indicate which account and process on the system requested the logon.

The Network Information fields indicate where a remote logon request originated. Workstation name is not always available and may be left blank in some cases.

The authentication information fields provide detailed information about this specific logon request.
	- Transited services indicate which intermediate services have participated in this logon request.
	- Package name indicates which sub-protocol was used among the NTLM protocols.
	- Key length indicates the length of the generated session key. This will be 0 if no session key was requested.

List successful logon attemps.

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In our example, we configured a GPO to audit logon success and failure events.

GPO – Audit logon success and failure

GPO – Audit logon success and failure

Equipment list

Windows Related Tutorial:

Tutorial GPO – Audit logon success and failure

Tutorial GPO – Audit logon events

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