Administering a security baseline

Once we have chosen our framework and designed and built our policies and standards, we need to start applying our baselines to managed devices. There are many scenarios and device states that play a factor in your administration decision and more than one way to deploy baselines. Technical limitations aside, each method will have its own pros and cons and you might find taking more than one approach to complement the next is preferred depending on your environment.

Deploying managed configurations

The following chart can act as a reference when deciding what solution best suits your environment. This list is not all-inclusive, but these are the most common methods for administering baselines on enterprise-managed PCs:

Figure 6.29 – Scenarios for administering a security baseline

Be mindful when choosing the application method and simplification is best to avoid creating conflicts.