Elastic Security Detection Rules

ESXi Audit Records Disabled

Last updated 2 days ago on 2026-09-30
Created 2 days ago on 2026-09-30

About

Detects ESXi audit record transmission being turned off, locally or to a remote collector. Audit records are the host's own trail of administrative changes. Disabling them means later changes to accounts, the firewall, and SSH are not recorded there.
Tags
Domain: EndpointData Source: VMware vSphereUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Defense EvasionRule Type: Custom Query (KQL)Platform: VMware ESXiLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Defense Evasion (TA0005)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Impair Defenses (T1562)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples
Audit settings change during collector maintenance. Confirm that transmission was enabled again and that the change matches a ticket.
License
Elastic License v2(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Query (Kibana Query Language)
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
logs-vsphere.log-*
Related Integrations

vsphere(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Query
text code block:
data_stream.dataset:vsphere.log and message:(auditrecords and ("--enabled false" or "--enabled=false" or "local disable" or "remote disable"))

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect ESXi Audit Records Disabled in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(external, opens in a new tab or window).