SearchWindowsSecurity.com's Hardening Windows School

Welcome to SearchWindowsSecurity.com's Hardening Windows School, where IT professionals will learn the best methods for hardening Windows-platformed machines against unknown security threats. Accompanying the six webcast lessons are three technical checklists -- one beginner, one intermediate and one advanced -- created by our guest instructor, Jonathan Hassell, and several quizzes from SearchWindowsSecurity.com.    Course Outline    Begin Lesson 1: Enabling automatic security updates for Windows    Begin Lesson 2: Establishing secure passwords and passphrases    Begin Lesson 3: Creating a custom security template    Begin Lesson 4: Planning Group Policy implementation with security in mind    Begin Lesson 5: Mandating SMB signing and understand consequences    Begin Lesson 6: Applying network access quarantine options    About the Instructor

SCHOOL HIGHLIGHTS

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Hardening Windows School Course Outline

Lesson 1 (Beginner): Enabling automatic security updates for Windows
Patch management is the bane of administrators' existence. Learn deployment procedures and considerations for Microsoft's patch management solution, and get a preview of the next version of Automatic Updates in this lesson.

• Webcast: Enabling automatic security updates for Windows Server 2003


• Hardening Windows School: Beginner's checklist for managing patches

Lesson 2 (Beginner): Establishing secure passwords and passphrases
Users are tired of remembering long characters of gibberish. Make it easier on them, and require full sentences that are easy to recall but long enough to thwart brute-force password attacks. You'll get several tips for creating strong passwords in this lesson.

• Webcast: Establishing secure passwords and passphrases

Lesson 3 (Intermediate): Creating a custom security template
Creating security templates is a great way to roll out a cohesive set of security settings to multiple Windows machines at one time. Doing so will help you achieve consistency and rapid deployment, which are goals of every network administrator. Find out how to create a custom template in this lesson.

• Webcast: Creating a custom security template

Lesson 4 (Intermediate): Planning Group Policy implementation with security in mind
Group Policy can be a simple way to distribute settings across a Windows domain environment, but it requires forethought and planning. Learn how to best structure a Group Policy implementation with security configurations in mind in this lesson.

• Webcast: Planning Group Policy implementation with security in mind
  
• Hardening Windows School: Intermediate checklist on secure Group Policy design

Lesson 5 (Intermediate): Mandating Server Message Block (SMB) signing and understand consequences
To prevent man-in-the-middle attacks and other nasty network infections, set up SMB signing. Then, both ends of a transmission can verify who sent the message and make sure that the contents of the message were not altered. Get help mandating SMB signing in this lesson.

• Webcast: Mandating Server Message Block (SMB) signing and understand consequences

Lesson 6 (Advanced): Applying network access quarantine options
Quarantining involves removing or limiting general network access for clients until their integrity has been verified. Learn what it takes to implement quarantining today, and then take a peek into the future of quarantining in Windows Server 2003 R2 and Longhorn client and server in this lesson.

• Webcast: Applying network access quarantine options
  
• Hardening Windows School: Advanced checklist on network access quarantining

About the Instructor

Jonathan Hassell is an author, consultant and speaker residing in Charlotte, North Carolina. Jonathan's books include RADIUS and Learning Windows Server 2003 for O'Reilly Media and Hardening Windows for Apress. His work is seen regularly in popular periodicals such as Windows IT Pro Magazine, SecurityFocus, PC Pro and Microsoft TechNet Magazine. He speaks around the world on topics including networking, security and Windows administration.

Click to ask Jon a question or purchase his book here.

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