Account Requirements for a Security Administrator

You need an account with privileges to perform the tasks of a security administrator.

An administrator who reviews security violations and possible vulnerabilities requires at least three privileges:

SECURITY and AUDIT privileges to enable security auditing and to set up security operator terminals
READALL privilege to review the protection of files and resources

In many cases, a security administrator serves as both the security administrator and the system manager. This person requires a full set of privileges. The HP OpenVMS System Manager's Manual describes the necessary characteristics of a system management account.

“Sample Security Administrator's Account” illustrates a number of AUTHORIZE qualifiers appropriate for a security administrator's account. Any value not specified defaults to the value provided by the default record in SYSUAF.DAT.

Example 6-1 Sample Security Administrator's Account

$ SET DEFAULT SYS$SYSTEM
$ RUN AUTHORIZE
UAF> ADD RIRONWOOD/PASSWORD=VALTERSY/UIC=[001,100] -
_UAF>/DEVICE=SYS$SYSDEVICE/DIRECTORY=[RIRONWOOD] -
_UAF>/OWNER="Russ Ironwood"/ACCOUNT=SECURITY/FLAGS=GENPWD -   [1]_UAF> /PWDLIFETIME=30-/PWDMINIMUM=8 -                           [2]_UAF> /PRIVILEGES=(AUDIT,SECURITY,READALL)                      [3]
identifier for value:[000001,000100] added to RIGHTSLIST.DAT
UAF>

Notice the following:

The requirement that the automatic password generator be used to change passwords.
The use of a short password lifetime.
Measures 1 and 2 are important to protect the account because it affords many valuable privileges and access rights.
SECURITY, AUDIT, and READALL privileges allow monitoring of the system but no modification. If you perform the tasks of a system manager, then you would need an account with SYSPRV. With SYSPRV, you can access protected objects by the system protection field and change the owner UIC and protection. You can change an object's protection to gain access to it.