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Windows Server 2008 Security Baseline

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Published: April 6, 2010   |   Updated: January 28, 2013

 

What’s New

The Windows Server 2008 Security Baseline is updated for Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2). This updated product baseline provides:

  • Setting severity ratings, allowing you to quickly sort, prioritize, and apply Microsoft security and compliance recommendations.
  • Consolidated product baselines that eliminate EC and SSLF baseline components, and make viewing, customizing, and implementing your security and compliance baselines easier than ever!
  • New compliance-based settings groups allow quicker and easier compliance reporting and audit preparation, when used with the GRC management solution within System Center.

Download This Solution Accelerator

The Windows Server 2008 SP2 Security Baseline is integrated with the Microsoft Security Compliance Manager (SCM) tool. To access the Windows Server 2008 SP2 Security Guide included in the Windows Server 2008 SP2 Security Baseline, please download SCM.

Launch the download of Security Compliance Manager.

Learn more about Security Compliance Manager.

Looking for the Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Security Baseline? Learn more.

About This Solution Accelerator

SCM is a free tool from the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team that enables you to quickly configure and manage your computers, traditional datacenter, and private cloud using Group Policy and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager. The tool is designed to provide you with an end-to-end solution to help you plan, deploy, and monitor the security baselines of computers running Windows Server 2008 SP2 in your environment.

What is a security baseline?

A security baseline is a collection of configurations items for a Microsoft product that provides prescribed values to solve a specific use case or scenario. Windows Server security baselines provide guidance and supporting technical data required to implement an effective and efficient security infrastructure that enables you to:

  • Understand threats.
  • Implement countermeasures.
  • Learn about product-specific recommendations.

This knowledge is accessed through the SCM tool, which gives you the ability to customize a security baseline to meet the unique requirements of your organization. The tool exports security baselines in multiple formats to help you apply the configuration and confirm the compliance level of the computers in your organization.

Windows Server security baselines include the following elements:

  • A detailed view of security vulnerabilities related to certain server, application, and browser settings, and the potential impact of configuring significant settings in these areas, to help you better understand how to effectively mitigate threats to your environment.
  • Recommended countermeasures to address such vulnerabilities, as well as the technical data required to implement and assess the state of each countermeasure that you implement.
  • A product-specific security guide that provides detailed instructions and recommendations to help strengthen the security of the servers in your organization.

About the Security Compliance Manager

We’ve taken our extensive threats and countermeasures guidance and incorporated it into the SCM tool, enabling you to assess, configure, and manage all of your organization’s security baselines in one centralized location. 

The Security Compliance Manager provides centralized security baseline management features, a baseline portfolio, customization capabilities, and security baseline export flexibility to accelerate your organization’s ability to efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies.

Take advantage of the experience of Microsoft security professionals, and reduce the time and money required to harden your environment. This end-to-end Solution Accelerator is designed to help you plan, deploy, operate, and manage your security baselines for Windows client and server operating systems, and Microsoft applications. Access the complete database of Microsoft recommended security settings, customize your baselines, and then choose from multiple formats—including Desired Configuration Management (DCM) packs, Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP), XLS, or Group Policy objects (GPOs)—to export the baselines to your environment and automate the security baseline compliance verification process.

Use the Security Compliance Manager tool to achieve a secure, reliable, and centralized IT environment that will help you better balance your organization’s needs for security and functionality.

Included in the Download

The Microsoft Security Compliance Manager download includes the following components:

  • Security_Compliance_Manager_Setup.exe – The Microsoft Security Compliance Manager allows you to view, update, and export security baselines.
  • LocalGPO.msi – This tool is designed to manage local Group Policy on a computer by applying a security baseline and exporting the local Group Policy.

Once you download and install the SCM tool, you can view all available Microsoft product security baselines. For more information, refer to the getting started guidance in the SCM TechNet Wiki.

The .cab file for the Windows Server 2008 SP2 Security Baseline includes the following components:

  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 Attack Surface Reference.xlsx
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 Security Guide.docx
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 AD Certificate Services Server Baseline
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 DHCP Server Baseline
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 DNS Server Baseline
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 Domain Controller Baseline
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 Domain Baseline
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 File Server Baseline
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 Hyper-V Baseline
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 Member Server Baseline
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 Network Access Services Server Baseline
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 Print Server Baseline
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 Terminal Services Server Baseline
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2 Web Server Baseline

Related Resources

The following resources provide additional information about security topics and in-depth discussion of the concepts and security prescriptions related to the Security Compliance Manager:

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Download This Accelerator

Launch the download of the Security Compliance Manager.