Luckily, third-party tools are available as a solution. MacOS doesn’t offer a way to do the locking.
This article will show you how to lock apps on Mac easily and efficiently. Restricting access to certain Mac apps - such as Messages, Photos and Mail - can help better protect your privacy especially when other people can access and use your computer. You may feel the need to put a lock on some of them. There are probably dozens if not more applications installed on your Mac. Learn Moreįor more information on account lockout settings, see Configuring Account Lockout at.
Note that if fine-grained password policies are being used, the default domain policy may not affect all accounts in such cases, you should also therefore check the reversible encryption setting in these fine-grained password policies. The current Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit (SCT) baseline recommended value for n is 10. In GPME, navigate to Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Account Policies\Account Lockout Policy.Ĭonfigure the Account lockout threshold setting to either 0, so that accounts are never locked out, or n, where n is a sufficiently high value to provide users with the ability to accidentally mistype their password several times before the account is locked, but ensure that a brute force password attack will still lock the account. Use Group Policy Management Editor (GPME) to open the Group Policy Object (GPO) that contains the effective password policy for the domain this GPO could be the Default Domain Policy or a custom GPO linked above (that is, with higher precedence than) the Default Domain Policy. If you enforce this setting an attacker could cause a denial of service condition by deliberately generating failed logons for multiple user, therefore you should also configure the Account lockout duration to a relatively low value such as 15 minutes. In fact, locked accounts cause the greatest number of calls to the help desk in many organizations. This setting will probably generate a number of additional help desk calls. If this policy setting is enabled, a locked-out account will not be usable until it is reset by an administrator or until the account lockout duration expires. This configuration will, therefore, prevent accidental account lockouts and reduce help desk calls, but will not prevent a DoS attack.
A robust audit mechanism is in place to alert administrators when a series of failed logons occur in the environment.
The password policy requires all users to have complex passwords of 8 or more characters.Because it will not prevent a brute force attack, this configuration should only be chosen if both of the following criteria are explicitly met: This configuration also helps reduce help desk calls because users cannot accidentally lock themselves out of their accounts. This configuration ensures that accounts will not be locked out, and will prevent a DoS attack that intentionally attempts to lock out accounts. Configure the Account lockout threshold setting to 0.Any organization should weigh the choice between the two based on their identified threats and the risks that they want to mitigate. If the number of attempts is greater than the account lockout threshold, the attacker might be able to lock out every account.īecause vulnerabilities can exist when the account lockout threshold value is configured as well as when it is not configured, two distinct countermeasures are defined. An attacker could programmatically attempt a series of password attacks against all users in the organization.
However, a Denial of Service (DoS) attack could be performed on a domain that has an account lockout threshold configured. The effectiveness of such attacks can be almost eliminated if you limit the number of failed logons that can be performed. Password attacks can use automated methods to try millions of password combinations for any user account.