Windows Server 2008 Security Guide – Final Release Now Available!
Securely deploy Windows Server 2008 with the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide!
Every day, adversaries attempt to invade your customers’ networks and access their servers—to bring them down, infect them with viruses, or steal information about customers or employees.
Your customers are looking to Microsoft and Windows Server® 2008 to help them address these threats. To assist customers in taking full advantage of the rich security features in Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has developed the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide.
The Windows Server 2008 Security Guide provides IT professionals with best practices, predefined security templates, and an automated deployment tool to help strengthen the security of servers running Windows Server 2008.
The Windows Server 2008 Security Guide is now available! To learn more about the guide, click here. And to share the guide with customers, just forward them this customizable e-mail—it includes a data sheet for the guide, and links to the download site.
The security recommendations in the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide are based on the combined experience of Microsoft security experts, customers, partners, and governments worldwide.
The guide lets customers choose from two preconfigured security baselines:
· Enterprise Client: This security baseline is best for the majority of organizations in which functionality is evenly balanced with security.
· Specialized Security – Limited Functionality: This baseline is best for organizations in which concern for security is so great that a significant loss of functionality is acceptable. For example, military and security agency organizations operate in this type of environment.
Both configurations have been thoroughly tested in Microsoft labs, and validated by customers and partners under real-world conditions. Customers can easily tailor the configuration they choose, modifying security settings to accommodate the unique needs of their organization.
This Solution Accelerator also includes the powerful GPOAccelerator tool to help customers quickly establish, test, and automatically deploy a tested configuration of Group Policy security settings across their organizations—in minutes, instead of hours or days.
The Windows Server 2008 Security Guide provides the following benefits to your customers :
· Fast, easy deployment. Customers using the guide’s best practices, predefined templates, and automated tools have reduced the time required to deploy security configurations by up to 80 percent. And by using the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide together with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2008, customers can automate the secure installation of their entire Windows Server 2008 infrastructure.
· More reliable. Automated tools and templates eliminate many manual steps—giving customers faster, more reliable results.
· Comprehensive. The guide includes information on hundreds of Windows Server 2008 security settings with recommendations for each setting. The guide also explains in detail how to further harden server roles—a key feature of Windows Server 2008—such as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), Web, and Terminal Services.
· Thoroughly tested. All security recommendations are fully tested in Microsoft labs, and verified by customers and partners under real-world conditions.
· Free. The Windows Server 2008 Security Guide and the GPOAccelerator are available as free downloads from the Microsoft Download Center. This Solution Accelerator includes the guidance, settings, templates, and the automated tool.
We’ve also created these additional resources that you can use to share information about this Solution Accelerator with customers and partners :