STIGUI
V-256365CAT II — Medium severitySV-256365r961863_rule

The vCenter Server must restrict access to cryptographic permissions.

Rule version VCSA-70-000285 · STIG v1 · 2026-08-31

Discussion

These permissions must be reserved for cryptographic administrators where virtual machine encryption and/or vSAN encryption is in use. Catastrophic data loss can result from poorly administered cryptography.

Check

By default, there are four roles that contain cryptographic-related permissions: Administrator, No Trusted Infrastructure Administrator, vCLSAdmin, and vSphere Kubernetes Manager.

From the vSphere Client, go to Administration >> Access Control >> Roles.

Highlight each role and click the 'Privileges" button in the right pane.

Verify that only the Administrator, No Trusted Infrastructure Administrator, vCLSAdmin, and vSphere Kubernetes Manager and any site-specific cryptographic roles have the following permissions:

Cryptographic Operations privileges Global.Diagnostics Host.Inventory.Add host to cluster Host.Inventory.Add standalone host Host.Local operations.Manage user groups

or

From a PowerCLI command prompt while connected to the vCenter server, run the following commands:

$roles = Get-VIRole ForEach($role in $roles){ $privileges = $role.PrivilegeList If($privileges -match "Crypto*" -or $privileges -match "Global.Diagnostics" -or $privileges -match "Host.Inventory.Add*" -or $privileges -match "Host.Local operations.Manage user groups"){ Write-Host "$role has Cryptographic privileges" } }

If any role other than the four default roles contain the permissions listed above and is not authorized to perform cryptographic-related operations, this is a finding.

Fix

From the vSphere Client, go to Administration >> Access Control >> Roles.

Highlight the target custom role and click "Edit".

Remove the following permissions from any custom role that is not authorized to perform cryptographic-related operations:

Cryptographic Operations privileges Global.Diagnostics Host.Inventory.Add host to cluster Host.Inventory.Add standalone host Host.Local operations.Manage user groups

Identifiers

Group ID
V-256365
Group title
SRG-APP-000516
Rule ID
SV-256365r961863_rule
Check ID
C-60040r919038_chk
Fix ID
F-59983r919039_fix