Policy

Enable Protected Event Logging

This policy setting lets you configure Protected Event Logging. If you enable this policy setting, components that support it will use the certificate you supply to encrypt potentially sensitive event log data before writing it to the event log. Data will be encrypted using the Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) standard and the public key you provide. You can use the Unprotect-CmsMessage PowerShell cmdlet to decrypt these encrypted messages, provided that you have access to the private key corresponding to the public key that they were encrypted with. If you disable or do not configure this policy setting, components will not encrypt event log messages before writing them to the event log.

Policy
Pack Microsoft Windows
Category Windows Components / Event Logging
Policy ID cae51b78a521
Internal name EnableProtectedEventLogging

Registry

Copy registry mappings

HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\EventLog\ProtectedEventLogging\EnableProtectedEventLogging (enabled) = 1
HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\EventLog\ProtectedEventLogging\EnableProtectedEventLogging (disabled) = 0
HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\EventLog\ProtectedEventLogging\EncryptionCertificate

Policy notes

This policy setting lets you configure Protected Event Logging. If you enable this policy setting, components that support it will use the certificate you supply to encrypt potentially sensitive event log data before writing it to the event log. Data will be encrypted using the Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) standard and the public key you provide. You can use the Unprotect-CmsMessage PowerShell cmdlet to decrypt these encrypted messages, provided that you have access to the private key corresponding to the public key that they were encrypted with. If you disable or do not configure this policy setting, components will not encrypt event log messages before writing them to the event log.