Tag Archives: Microsoft - Page 2

Implement Policy Changes and Staging with Dynamic Access Control

Implement Policy Changes and Staging

This post will show you how to implement policy changes and staging with regards to auditing using Dynamic Access Control (DAC). This allows us to stage and test a central access policy before actually using it in production. This is a useful feature, as implementing DAC can be complex to work with.

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Install PowerShell 5 in Windows Server 2008 R2

Download WMF 5.1 to a Windows Server 2008 R2 System

Windows Management Framework (WMF) 5.1 contains PowerShell 5.1. By default Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 runs the older PowerShell version 2. By downloading and installing WMF 5.1 to a Windows Server 2008 R2 system, we can upgrade it to PowerShell version 5.1.

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Implement Work Folders in Windows Server 2016

Implement work folders

In this post I’ll show you how to implement Work Folders with a Windows Server 2016 file server and Windows 10 client. Work Folders allow a user to access their files from an internal file server remotely over the Internet.

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Implement BitLocker Recovery Process using self-recovery and recovery password retrieval solutions

Implement BitLocker Recovery Process using self-recovery and recovery password retrieval solutions

What happens if you forget your BitLocker PIN or lose the key? We can implement BitLocker recovery process using self-recovery and recovery password retrieval solutions in Windows Server 2016.

There are a few different methods of recovering BitLocker which we’ll cover here.

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Configure SMB signing via Group Policy

Configure SMB Signing via Group Policy

The Server Message Block (SMB) protocol is used to provide file and print sharing in a Microsoft based network. To help detect man in the middle (MITM) attacks that may modify SMB traffic in transit, we can configure SMB signing via group policy. By digitally signing SMB packets the client and server can confirm where they originated from as well as their authenticity.

SMB packet signing is available in all supported versions of Windows. Microsoft also note that depending on factors such as the SMB version, file sizes, and specific hardware in use, SMB packet signing can degrade the performance of SMB, which is to be expected as we’re signing every packet that goes across the network, which adds overhead.

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Secure DNS Traffic Using DNSSEC and DNS Policies

Secure DNS Traffic Using DNSSEC and DNS Policies

In Windows Server 2016 we can secure DNS traffic using DNSSEC and DNS policies. DNSSEC allows a client to validate DNS responses, as by default DNS was not designed to be a secure protocol. DNSSEC allows a client to confirm that the information which has been returned from a DNS server has actually come from the correct and trusted DNS server without modification.

DNSSEC, which stands for Domain Name System Security Extensions, was added to help secure the existing DNS protocol. This guide will walk you through configuring DNSSEC in a Windows Server 2016 environment.

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Implement Auditing using Windows PowerShell

Implement Auditing using Windows PowerShell

We can implement auditing using Windows PowerShell with the Get-Acl and Set-Acl cmdlets. These allow us to view and modify the auditing options of a file or folder in Windows. While this can also be done through the graphical user interface, using PowerShell allows us to script such actions, as well as some extra functionality such as copying the auditing settings from one object to another.

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Enable and configure Module, Script Block, and Transcription logging in Windows PowerShell

Enable and configure Module, Script Block, and Transcription logging in Windows PowerShell

This post will show you how to enable and configure module, script block, and transcription logging in Windows PowerShell. Module logging allows you to specify the PowerShell modules that you want to log. Script block stores PowerShell commands that are run without the output, while transcription logging records the PowerShell commands that are run along with the full result of the command.

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Configure the Audit Group Membership Policy

Configure the Audit Group Membership Policy

We can configure the audit group membership policy using group policy, allowing us to record the group of a user in a login event log entry. This is used in addition to the Audit Logon policy to expand the information provided and include the group membership information of the user accessing the system.

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Configure the Audit PNP Activity Policy

Configure the Audit PNP Activity Policy

In this post we’ll show you how to configure the audit PNP activity policy in Windows Server 2016 via group policy.

PNP, or Plug and Play, is used so that the operating system automatically detects and configures an external device so that it’s ready to use. A common example is when you plugin a USB storage device and it “just works”. By auditing PNP activity, we can log events every time an external device is detected.

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