Welcome to Getting Started with Windows Server Security is a critical component for any organization. It can be implemented in various levels. Every organization has its own security polices based on their business and technical requirements. These policies must apply to end-to-end devices and services to effectively secure your IT infrastructure. As a security administrator, it is your responsibility to convert these business requirements into technical requirements. This book provides various methods to analyze your requirements and convert them based on the best practices and industry standards.
This book will walk you through different security tools and their configurations and implementation details based on my real-world experience. The goal is to have a protected and secure Microsoft Server infrastructure platform at the end of this journey. To achieve this goal in an efficient way, this book is divided into various chapters. Each chapter will provide you step-by-step instructions to secure your server infrastructure based on the installed components and applications on the server. For a security or Windows Server administrator, this book can be used as a reference manual when securing or hardening your server infrastructure.
Chapter 1, Operating System and Baseline Security, provides the details to translate your business requirements into a technical policy and implement these security policies in a Microsoft infrastructure environment. This chapter also covers instructions on creating and implementing Windows baseline polices using Microsoft Security Configuration Wizard.
Chapter 2, Native MS Security Tools and Configuration, provides an overview of various Microsoft tools and explains how they can be used in an enterprise to support your compliance and security needs. This chapter converts the configuration and implementation details of the Microsoft Security Compliance Manager, Attack Surface Analyzer, application control, and other auditing policies.
Chapter 3, Server Roles and Protocols, provides the details and methods to select correct server types and roles and identify and control unwanted services based on your requirements. It also provides a PowerShell-based solution to create and analyze baseline images based on the application or server type.
Chapter 4, Application Security, provides various options to create a secure server infrastructure platform for your application using Microsoft technologies. This chapter also covers the details to secure file and data servers, print servers, Hyper-V, web servers and encryption, and BitLocker technologies.
Chapter 5, Network Service Security, provides the details of protecting and controlling Microsoft network services. This chapter provides step-by-step instructions on securing Active Directory, Domain Controller, DNS, DHCP and configuration, and implementation details of gMSA and EMET.
Chapter 6, Access Control, provides an overview of the new access control mechanisms in Windows Server 2012. The step-by-step installation and configuration details of Dynamic Access Control are also included in this chapter.
Chapter 7, Patch Management, provides the details of maintaining the security and integrity of your Windows server using various Microsoft technologies. The step-by-step instructions on implementing and administering WSUS are also included in this chapter.
Chapter 8, Auditing and Monitoring, provides different options to audit and monitor your server infrastructure using various technologies. The details of auditing polices, GPOs, event forwarding, event alerting, and Best Practices Analyzer are also included in this chapter.
The configuration and implementation details provided in this book are based on the Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 operation systems. So, you need to have one of these operating systems at hand. You will also need to have the following software to successfully implement the solutions described in this book:
Windows PowerShell
Microsoft Security Configuration Wizard
Microsoft Security Compliance Manger
Surface Attack Analyzer
AppLocker
BitLocker
Group Policy Objects
Best Practices Analyzer
This book is for server or security administrators who wants to advance their knowledge in Microsoft security and are responsible for the security and administration of the Microsoft Windows Server infrastructure.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Once you perform the rollback operation, the XML files get deleted from the rollbackfiles folder."
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
Get-ADComputer -Filter * -Properties * | Select Name, OperatingSystem |out-file C:\Reports\ServerInfo.txt
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Click on Finish on the Completing the Security Configuration Wizard screen to complete the rollback operation."
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded on our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.
Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content.
You can contact us at <[email protected]> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.