Microsoft® Windows® Group Policy Guide

General Hardening Techniques

Many techniques are available for hardening clients and servers. Here we’ll focus on commonly used tools, techniques related to Group Policy, and security capabilities of security templates.

Two of the most important areas that need attention when you harden computers are ports and services. We will discuss various ways to control these areas on a computer and also look at some tools that can help you investigate the current state of a computer for which ports are being used.

Closing Unnecessary Ports

Ports are used by services and other applications to allow two computers to communicate. These ports are doorways into a client or server. Over the years, attackers have exploited ports to gain access to Windows–based computers. ...