This policy setting allows administrators to enable the more precise auditing capabilities present in Windows Vista. The Audit Policy settings available in Windows Server 2003 Active Directory do not yet contain settings for managing the new auditing subcategories. To properly apply the auditing policies prescribed in this baseline, the Audit: Force audit policy subcategory settings (Windows Vista or later) to override audit policy category settings setting needs to be configured to Enabled. Countermeasure: Enable audit policy subcategories as needed to track specific events. Potential Impact: The individual audit policy subcategories that are available in Windows Vista are not exposed in the interface of Group Policy tools. Administrators can deploy a custom audit policy that applies detailed security auditing settings to Windows Vista-based client computers in a Windows Server 2003 domain or in a Windows 2000 domain. If after enabling this setting, you attempt to modify an auditing setting by using Group Policy, the Group Policy auditing setting will be ignored in favor of the custom policy setting. To modify auditing settings by using Group Policy, you must first disable this key. Important: Be very cautious about audit settings that can generate a large volume of traffic. For example, if you enable either success or failure auditing for all of the Privilege Use subcategories, the high volume of audit events generated can make it difficult to find other types of entries in the Security log. Such a configuration could also have a significant impact on system performance."

[enabled/disabled]

(1) GPO: Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Audit: Force audit policy subcategory settings (Windows Vista or later) to override audit policy category settings