Guidelines For Designing Incremental Security Templates

By Author: Mike Jones
Total Articles: 256

Designing incremental security templates for server roles consists of determining where security settings A plus benefits in the template need to be changed from those set in the baseline template. In general, this is not an onerous task because few settings need to be changed. However, security for server roles generally involves much more than modi fications made to the security templates. Settings specific to the role usually must be made to server applications running on the server. Application specific settings are not part of the security templates. Follow these guidelines when designing incremental security templates:
General guidelines:
Rename the Guest and Administrator accounts and their descriptions. Do not give them the same name for every server. By varying the name in this way, an attacker who discovers the name will not have the names for all servers.
Disable the Guest account, and disable the Administrators account if it will not be used.
Configure recommended services in the templates even if you configure them on the servers before templates are applied. Configuring them in the tem?plates ensures they are not disabled on the local server. Configuring them in the templates makes the Administrators group the only group that can change the startup mode of the service.
File server guidelines:
Set the DPS service to Automatic only if you are using file servers to provide 220-701 test cost services.
Set the File Replication Service (NTFRS) to Automatic only if you are using file servers to provide this service.
Print server guidelines:
Set the Print Spooler service to Automatic.
Infrastructure server guidelines:
Set the DHCP Server service to Automatic if DHCP servers are used on the network.
Set the WINS service to Automatic if WINS servers are used on the network.Set the DNS service to Automatic if DNS is used on the network.
IIS server guidelines:
Grant the user right "Deny access to this computer from the network" to the ANONYMOUS LOGON, Built-in Administrator, Support_388945aO, Guest, and all non-operating system service accounts.
The baseline policy included the Guests group in the user right "Deny access to this computer from the network". However, IIS uses the ISUR_servername account as a member of the Guests group for anonymous access by Internet users.

Set the HTTP SSL service (HTTPFilter) start up mode to Automatic.Set the World Wide Web Publishing service to Automatic.
Do not enable (or install) other Web server services unless required by the Web server and approved by Free MCSE PDF questions management. Recommendations about when to use which components are available online as well as in the "Microsoft Win?dows Server 2000 Security Guide".