Security Strategies in Windows Platforms and Applications, 3rd Edition

Making Group Policy Conform to Security Policy

Group Policy is a functional feature of Windows that has little meaning by itself. It is a mechanism used to apply controls enforcing your security policy. For example, should you set a maximum password age for all the computers in your environment? The answer is: “It depends.” Setting a maximum password age is generally a good idea, but not something you should arbitrarily enforce. Your security policy should direct any settings you add to GPOs. In fact, the GPOs you define and use should conform to your security policy. There are two main reasons for making Group Policy conform to your security policy: to allow management to meet security responsibilities, and to ensure that there are no gaps ...