Book Image

Mastering Windows Security and Hardening

By : Mark Dunkerley, Matt Tumbarello
Book Image

Mastering Windows Security and Hardening

By: Mark Dunkerley, Matt Tumbarello

Overview of this book

Are you looking for effective ways to protect Windows-based systems from being compromised by unauthorized users? Mastering Windows Security and Hardening is a detailed guide that helps you gain expertise when implementing efficient security measures and creating robust defense solutions. We will begin with an introduction to Windows security fundamentals, baselining, and the importance of building a baseline for an organization. As you advance, you will learn how to effectively secure and harden your Windows-based system, protect identities, and even manage access. In the concluding chapters, the book will take you through testing, monitoring, and security operations. In addition to this, you’ll be equipped with the tools you need to ensure compliance and continuous monitoring through security operations. By the end of this book, you’ll have developed a full understanding of the processes and tools involved in securing and hardening your Windows environment.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Started
6
Section 2: Applying Security and Hardening
13
Section 3: Protecting, Detecting, and Responding for Windows Environments

Introduction to hardware certification

Ensuring your hardware is certified is a critical process of the overall security program. As you purchase new servers, PCs, storage, and peripherals, it is critical you validate that the hardware is compatible with your deployed systems. Using non-compliant hardware could make your hardware vulnerable to a compromise or the additional hardware components could even have a compromise already embedded in them.

An example would be allowing the use of USB drives on your devices. Users receiving a free USB drive don't realize that the drive itself could be infected and that, once inserted into your device, it could compromise your entire organization. Because of this, it is critical you only allow pre-certified USB drives that are encrypted and provided by the organization to be used by employees. Any data that is copied from a USB drive to a company device must require encryption. Another concern, as mentioned previously, is the supply chain...