Book Image

Mastering Windows Group Policy

By : Jordan Krause
5 (1)
Book Image

Mastering Windows Group Policy

5 (1)
By: Jordan Krause

Overview of this book

This book begins with a discussion of the core material any administrator needs to know in order to start working with Group Policy. Moving on, we will also walk through the process of building a lab environment to start testing Group Policy today. Next we will explore the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) and start using the powerful features available for us within that interface. Once you are well versed with using GPMC, you will learn to perform and manage the traditional core tasks inside Group Policy. Included in the book are many examples and walk-throughs of the different filtering options available for the application of Group Policy settings, as this is the real power that Group Policy holds within your network. You will also learn how you can use Group Policy to secure your Active Directory environment, and also understand how Group Policy preferences are different than policies, with the help of real-world examples. Finally we will spend some time on maintenance and troubleshooting common Group Policy-related issues so that you, as a directory administrator, will understand the diagnosing process for policy settings. By the end of the book, you will be able to jump right in and use Group Policy to its full potential.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Summary

There are many, many more security-related settings available inside Group Policy; it's simply impossible to cover all of them. Now that you have some baseline knowledge of how to implement these policies and where the security settings are stored in Group Policy (all over the place!), the possibilities are endless for coming up with creative new ways to lock down your systems. To me, creating a secure environment is the number one reason to utilize Group Policy in any domain environment, and I think that the majority of companies out there would increase their use of GPO security settings tenfold if they took the time to sift through the options and figure out what they really want from a desktop lockdown policy.

In addition to some sample ad-hoc settings that are useful to incorporate into almost any environment, we spent quite a bit of time discussing the WFAS...