Skip to content

AD-GPO-03: GPO stale-before-2020 count should be investigated

ID AD-GPO-03
Severity Info
Suite Active Directory (on-premises)
Product Active Directory
Feature Group Policy
Security area Infrastructure hardening
Resource type GroupPolicy
Reads from On-premises Active Directory

Group Policy Objects (GPOs) that have not been modified for a long time can become “stale”. Stale GPOs may contain outdated security configurations, which can create security gaps if they no longer match your current security baselines.

Operational

Regularly review GPOs that have not changed recently. Consider:

  • Validating that security settings are still required and aligned with your current baseline
  • Removing or updating policies that are no longer used or no longer appropriate
  • Establishing a review cadence for long-lived policies

This test uses Get-MtADGpoState to retrieve cached GPO data. It filters GPOs where ModificationTime is earlier than 2020-01-01 and calculates:

  • Total number of GPOs
  • Number and percentage of stale GPOs
  • Test-MtAdGpoTotalCount - Counts the total number of GPOs

Mito check. Author: soulemike. Open-source licences.

Open-source licences. CIS Benchmark material © Center for Internet Security, Inc.; CISA SCuBA baselines are public domain (CC0).

© 2026 Virtual Petals. Mito is a Virtual Petals service, hosted in Microsoft Azure UAE North.