Group Policy Central

I was recently approached to do a book review on “Least Privilege Security for Windows 7,Vista and XP by Russell Smith” published by Packt Publishing. This book is a comprehensive guide at showing how to configure your Windows environment so that your users can operate without administrator permissions. While most administrators realise that giving administrators access to the end users is really poor practice and can lead to many security issues it is quite often a permission that some users require to do their job for whatever reason.

Its good to see that this book is quite comprehensive in the number of areas of technology as I firmly believe that you really need to take a multi-prong approach when it comes to security. Here is a list of the just some of technologies that this book talks about to achieve a Least Privilege Security:

• Program Compatibility Wizard
• Applications Compatibility Wizard
• User Account Control
• Group Policy Software Deployment
• Internet Explorer Add-on Management
• Troubleshooting Remote Users
• Configuring Windows Firewall
• Software Restrictions Policies and AppLocker
• Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
• CD Burning
• ActiveX Controls
• Changing system time and time zones
• Power Management
• Managing networks
• Standard Users Analyzer
• Applications Compatibility Toolkit
• Logon Scripts
• Remote Desktop Services
• App-V
• Med-V

In quite a lot of chapters Russell goes into detail step by step instructions explain how to use the above technologies.  But what I really like is that he also takes the time to talk about how to approach the Cultural and Political challenges in implementing this security model as this is normally the hardest part achieving a secure environment.

Configuring security is something that organisation rarely spend much time thinking about and even more rarely do anything about. Having this book in your library will at least give you the knowledge that is required to start to configure your Windows system to be more secure. I would definitely recommend this book as a reference to anyone in an organisation who is responsible for designing and/or making changes to their Windows environment.

As a special offer Packt Publishing are also letting people download preview chapter of this book by download here Chapter No. 3 – Solving Least privilege Problems with the Application Compatibility Toolkit 

Packt Publishing have also announced discount for purchases of two or more so you could use this offer to get a discount when you buy another book from their catalogue (See new-discounts-launched-purchases-multiple-books for details).

You can either purchase the paper and/or PDF (for convenient iPad reading) version of this book right now from: Least Privilege Security for Windows 7,Vista and XP by Russell Smith

I just got my hands on Jeremy Moskowitz (fellow Group Policy MVP) latest publication called “Group Policy – Fundamentals Security and the Managed Desktop” and as I found it to be a really great book for Group Policy I decided to do a review. This is an updated version of Jeremy previous Group Policy books that has been updated to cover the new Windows 7 and Windows Server 2003 R2 features but of course is still covers the stubbornly popular Windows XP. In read this book it quite apparent that Jeremy bring his experience to this book as it is full of many insightful real world examples and notes. What’s also refreshing about this book (unlike MSPress books) is that its covers solutions using both native tools and third-party tools.

• Chapter 1 – Group Policy Essentials
• Chapter 2 – Managing Group Policy with GPMC
• Chapter 3 – Group Policy Processing Behaviour Essentials
• Chapter 4 – Advanced Group Policy Processing
• Chapter 5 – Group Policy Preferences
• Chapter 6 – Managing Applications and Setting Using Group Policy
• Chapter 7 – Troubleshooting Security with Group Policy
• Chapter 8 – Implementing Security with Group Policy
• Chapter 9 – Profiles: Local, Roaming, and Mandatory
• Chapter 10 – Implementing a Managed Desktop, Part 1: Redirected Folders, Offline Files, and the Synchronization Manager
• Chapter 11 – The Managed Desktop, Part 2: Software Deployment via Group Policy
• Chapter 12 – Finishing Touches with Group Policy: Scripts, Internet Explorer, Hardware Control, Deploying Printers, and Shadow Copies
• Appendix A – Group Policy Tools

The only bad thing I can say about this book is that it over 800 pages so its fairly heavy to keep on your person all the time BUT it also comes in digital format so you download it for your Kindle or for your iPad. Weather you are a novice or expert I thoroughly recommend that you purchase this book for your technical reference library as its a both a great primer beginners and and excellent references for the more advanced policy administrators. If your still not sure you can also click on the image above you can take a look an example chapter.

If you are after a copy of the book you you can go to www.gpanswers.com/book and get a personally signed copy you can of course order it from Amazon if you want.

ISBN-13: 978-0470581858

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