Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Name

security policy

Synopsis

The part of a Group Policy Object (GPO) that implements security in the domain and on local computers.

Description

Security polices are used to secure various aspects of Windows 2000 computers. Security polices are implemented using Group Policy and can be identified with the following subset of a GPO:

Computer Configuration → Windows Settings → Security Settings

There may be as many as nine different groups of security policy settings depending on whether you are configuring security at the domain or local-machine level. See Section in the article Group Policy in this chapter for information on these different groups of settings.

Default Security Policies

There are three default security policies in Windows 2000 (for more information about each security policy, see their associated articles in Chapter 5):

Local Security Policy

This is actually a system policy (not a GPO) that can be configured on stand- alone Windows 2000 computers or on Windows 2000 computers that are part of a workgroup instead of a domain.

Tip

Local Security Policy also exists on computers that are part of a domain, but you should use Group Policy instead to configure security on these computers, as this provides the benefit of centralized management of security settings.

Domain Security Policy

This is the Security Settings portion of the Default Domain Policy GPO, which is linked to the domain container in Active Directory Users and Computers.

Domain Controller Security Policy

This is the ...