Windows Server blog by Kurt Roggen [BE]

The Windows Server 2008 Security Guide will provide guidance, recommendations, and automation tools for the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 operating system to help IT Professionals create and maintain a secure environment for a variety of servers running Windows Server 2008.

Windows Server 2008 is engineered from the ground up with security in mind.  The Windows Server 2008 Security Guide is designed to further enhance the security of the servers in your organization by taking full advantage of the new and improved security technologies and features in Windows Server 2008.  Use the guidance to deploy your security baseline quickly and reliably, harden your server workloads, and evaluate security setting recommendations to meet the requirements of your environment.

The powerful GPOAccelerator tool is included with the guidance to enable you to automatically deploy a tested configuration of Group Policy security settings across your organization - in minutes, instead of hours or days.

The tool creates all of the Group Policy objects (GPOs) you need to deploy the security configuration you choose and also eliminates many manual steps in the deployment process to give you faster and more reliable results.

With more than 200 security and privacy setting options, you can fine-tune your deployment of Windows Server 2008, balancing your organization’s needs for security and functionality.

Harden Your Server Workloads

This security guide also includes detailed guidance on how to harden Windows Server 2008 to handle different server "workloads" in your organization, including servers that perform as domain controllers and others that provide DNS, DHCP, Web, File, and Print services.  The tested guidance describes how to harden key services like Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), Network Access Services and Terminal Services.

Signup for the beta here.

Security guides also exist for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP.