Before walking through any specific security settings, if you are the type of person who just wants to dig in and try it for yourself, let's take a minute and point out a few common locations inside GPME that contain multitudes of security-related settings. There is no way that we can cover all useful settings inside one chapter, so I encourage all of you to dig around inside these locations and find many additional configurations that will fit into your overall security strategy. As with most GPO settings, there are many options that can be configured inside either Computer Configuration or User Configuration, depending on your target audience for the GPO. Our primary location for security settings is, aptly named, inside the Security Settings folder, Computer or User Configuration | Policies | Windows Settings | Security Settings:

While Security Settings contains many items to sift through, there are also administrative templates and even preferences that contain settings that can enhance the security of your computers. Here are a few of those locations:

• Computer or User Configuration | Policies | Administrative Templates | Control Panel
• Computer or User Configuration | Policies | Administrative Templates | Start Menu and Taskbar
• Computer or User Configuration | Policies | Administrative Templates | System

Now that I am looking through some of these folders, there are security-related settings everywhere!

The moral of the story is this: if there is a particular task that you want to accomplish, or a specific piece of the Windows operating system that you want to lock down, there is a great chance that a Group Policy setting exists to do it. Browsing around inside these lists will give you a lot of great ideas for new ways that you can lock down your machines.