SQL Server® 2008 Administration: Real World Skills for MCITP Certification and Beyond

Establishing Baselines

Security baselines are used to establish minimum requirements for a system or a server. It's good to think of these minimum requirements or baselines as the enforcement of best practices. While the phrase best practice may be taken to mean a suggested practice, secure organizations actually enforce the best practice through the use of baselines. Different types of servers will require different baselines. Database servers, for example, are accessed using different ports and protocols than file and print servers. For this reason, many organizations establish baseline security configurations based on the server type. Server types requiring baselines may include:

• Authentication servers
• File and print servers
• Email servers ...