Deploying Windows Security Baselines

Security baselining is the practice of implementing a minimum set of standards and configurations to apply to your Windows systems across the environment. More specifically, as a critical component of the zero-trust strategy, it ensures systems and devices are deployed consistently in the desired state according to the baseline. Two main frameworks to reference when defining these configurations are Microsoft Security Baselines and the Center for Internet Security (CIS). Earlier in Chapter 2, Building a Baseline, we provided an overview of these frameworks and how to use them. We also referenced a tool that's available in the Microsoft Security and Compliance toolkit called Policy Analyzer, which can be used to compare recommended policies against the pre-configured settings locally on the system.

In the next section, we are going to learn how to apply these recommendations by leveraging tools such as Group Policy, Configuration Manager...