Specifying security requirements for servers, including multiple platforms and operating systems

Utilizing the Security Compliance Toolkit is one way to build a strategy for your server endpoints to maintain a security baseline. Included within the security strategy is how to manage the administration of the server operating systems. Each server and endpoint within a domain has an administrator account. In a large company, managing these administrator accounts becomes a challenge. These administrator accounts become a security concern and increase the attack surface for a potential identity breach to gain access to the account. The danger is that that server administrator account could be the administrator account to the domain controller on the Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) network, exposing the domain controller and the member servers.

The encrypted Server Message Block (SMB) protocol can be used to protect against exposure on these servers. The SMB protocol is primarily...