Book Image

Active Directory Administration Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Sander Berkouwer
Book Image

Active Directory Administration Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Sander Berkouwer

Overview of this book

Updated to the Windows Server 2022, this second edition covers effective recipes for Active Directory administration that will help you leverage AD's capabilities for automating network, security, and access management tasks in the Windows infrastructure. Starting with a detailed focus on forests, domains, trusts, schemas, and partitions, this book will help you manage domain controllers, organizational units, and default containers. You'll then explore Active Directory sites management as well as identify and solve replication problems. As you progress, you'll work through recipes that show you how to manage your AD domains as well as user and group objects and computer accounts, expiring group memberships, and Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSAs) with PowerShell. Once you've covered DNS and certificates, you'll work with Group Policy and then focus on federation and security before advancing to Azure Active Directory and how to integrate on-premise Active Directory with Azure AD. Finally, you'll discover how Microsoft Azure AD Connect synchronization works and how to harden Azure AD. By the end of this AD book, you’ll be able to make the most of Active Directory and Azure AD Connect.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)

Using the SCW to secure domain controllers

This recipe shows how to secure domain controllers running older versions of Windows Server, using the Windows Server SCW and Group Policy.

Getting ready

To secure domain controllers using the SCW, sign in to a domain controller with a user account that is a member of the Domain Admins group.

The Security Configuration Wizard was removed from Windows Server 2016 and is not present in Windows Server versions since this version. Features are secured by default. This recipe applies to full installations of the following Windows Server versions:

  • Windows Server 2008
  • Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Windows Server 2012
  • Windows Server 2012 R2

How to do it

Securing domain controllers using the Windows Server SCW and Group Policy consists of two steps:

  1. Securing a representative domain controller using the SCW
  2. Rolling out the security settings to all domain controllers using Group Policy

Secure a representative...