diff --git a/ReleaseNotes.md b/ReleaseNotes.md
index 9be5086a..fafd4680 100644
--- a/ReleaseNotes.md
+++ b/ReleaseNotes.md
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ Added: every DDS module logs now its pid, group id and parent pid. (GH-403)
 Added: Support for Task Assets. (GH-406)    
 Added: Cancel running and pending SLURM jobs on DDS shutdown. (GH-429)   
 Added: Support for Apple's arm64 architecture. (GH-393)    
+Added: $DDS_CONFIG and "/etc/dds/DDS.cfg" are added to the DDS config search paths. (GH-458)   
 
 ### dds-agent
 Fixed: Address potential crash in the external process termination routines.    
diff --git a/dds-misc-lib/src/SSHConfigFile.cpp b/dds-misc-lib/src/SSHConfigFile.cpp
index 3068fe31..5929021a 100644
--- a/dds-misc-lib/src/SSHConfigFile.cpp
+++ b/dds-misc-lib/src/SSHConfigFile.cpp
@@ -4,9 +4,9 @@
 //
 //=============================================================================
 // std
+#include <fstream>
 #include <iomanip>
 #include <iostream>
-#include <fstream>
 // boost
 #include <boost/tokenizer.hpp>
 // Misc
diff --git a/dds-user-defaults/src/UserDefaults.cpp b/dds-user-defaults/src/UserDefaults.cpp
index 8ecd99f8..7e463218 100644
--- a/dds-user-defaults/src/UserDefaults.cpp
+++ b/dds-user-defaults/src/UserDefaults.cpp
@@ -329,7 +329,8 @@ const SDDSUserDefaultsOptions_t CUserDefaults::getOptions() const
 string CUserDefaults::currentUDFile()
 {
     CFindCfgFile<string> cfg;
-    cfg.SetOrder("$HOME/.DDS/DDS.cfg")("$DDS_LOCATION/etc/DDS.cfg")("$DDS_LOCATION/DDS.cfg");
+    cfg.SetOrder("$DDS_CONFIG")("$HOME/.DDS/DDS.cfg")("$DDS_LOCATION/etc/DDS.cfg")("$DDS_LOCATION/DDS.cfg")(
+        "/etc/dds/DDS.cfg");
     string val;
     cfg.GetCfg(&val);
 
diff --git a/dds-user-defaults/tests/test.cpp b/dds-user-defaults/tests/test.cpp
index 896ff5a5..012cc9be 100644
--- a/dds-user-defaults/tests/test.cpp
+++ b/dds-user-defaults/tests/test.cpp
@@ -4,12 +4,15 @@
 // STD
 #include <fstream>
 // BOOST
+#include <boost/filesystem.hpp>
 #include <boost/test/unit_test.hpp>
 // DDS
+#include "MiscUtils.h"
 #include "UserDefaults.h"
 
 using namespace std;
 using namespace dds::user_defaults_api;
+namespace fs = boost::filesystem;
 
 BOOST_AUTO_TEST_SUITE(Test_UserDefaults);
 
@@ -59,4 +62,23 @@ BOOST_AUTO_TEST_CASE(Test_UserDefaults_DefaultSID_FromSIDFile)
         }*/
 }
 
+BOOST_AUTO_TEST_CASE(Test_UserDefaults_CustomCfgPath)
+{
+    fs::path pathCfg{ fs::temp_directory_path() / fs::unique_path() };
+    fs::create_directories(pathCfg);
+    pathCfg /= "dds_test.cfg";
+
+    ofstream f(pathCfg.string());
+    BOOST_TEST(f.is_open());
+    f << "[server]\n"
+      << "idle_time=10\n";
+    f.close();
+
+    dds::misc::auto_setenv env1("DDS_CONFIG", pathCfg.string());
+    CUserDefaults::instance().reinit(boost::uuids::string_generator()(CUserDefaults::instance().getDefaultSID()),
+                                     CUserDefaults::instance().currentUDFile());
+    fs::remove(pathCfg);
+    BOOST_TEST(CUserDefaults::instance().getValueForKey("server.idle_time") == "10");
+}
+
 BOOST_AUTO_TEST_SUITE_END();