Microsoft® Windows® Group Policy Guide

Summary

Using Group Policy, you can manage network communications security for IP security, public key encryption, and Windows Firewall. IP Security allows for secure, authenticated, and encrypted communications on TCP/IP networks. IPSec is ideally suited for special-purpose servers that require extra network-layer protection. It also provides rudimentary port filtering, although with the advent of Windows Firewall, using IPSec is probably not the best approach for this task. Public key encryption lets you control the use of public key certificates and enables such useful end-user features as Encrypting File System (EFS) and e-mail encryption. Windows Firewall provides stateful TCP/IP filtering to protect computers against unauthorized access. ...