Chapter 2: Building a Baseline

In this chapter, we are going to cover the importance of building a baseline for your Windows systems. As you deploy tens to hundreds to thousands of Windows devices, you need to ensure that you are deploying your devices pre-hardened and secured. In addition to this, you need to ensure consistency with every system that is deployed. This is where building a foundation is critical and must be followed. In addition to the baseline requirements, very stringent policies, standards, and procedures must be followed. Anyone falling outside of these boundaries will create additional risk to the organization, so it is critical that a well-defined program is put in place early on with the backing of support and leadership.

As you read through this chapter, you will learn the following:

• An introduction and overview of baselining and its importance
• Policies, standards, procedures, and guidelines used within an enterprise and their relation to baselining
• Incorporating change management
• Implementing a security framework
• Building baseline controls
• Implementing a baseline
• Incorporating best practices