Endpoint Security

8. Microsoft Windows

In this chapter, we get specific by starting with the Windows environment. Most of you have picked up this book and turned to this chapter because this is where most of your pain is, so we’ll start with things that you can do to Windows in general to improve your security posture. We’re not going to concern ourselves with anything prior to Windows 2000 because those early versions of Windows weren’t really capable of protecting themselves or the data on the system.

Microsoft has been much maligned over the years, but although much can be said of Microsoft, being stupid isn’t one of them. Microsoft has done a Herculean job of turning a huge organization into a huge security-aware organization in a fairly short time. As you’ll ...