Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 Inside Out

Securing the Registry

The Registry is a critical area of the operating system. It has some limited built-in security to reduce the risk of settings being inadvertently changed or deleted. Additionally, some areas of the Registry are available only to certain users. For example, HKLM\SAM and HKLM\SECURITY are available only to the LocalSystem user. This security in some cases might not be enough, however, to prevent unauthorized access to the Registry. Because of this, you might want to set tighter access controls than the default permissions, and you can do this from within the Registry. You can also control remote access to the Registry and configure access auditing.

Preventing Access to the Registry Utilities

One of the best ways to protect the ...