File Systems, Remote Access, and Monitoring - Essay Example

This essay stresses that VPN connections allow users working at home or on the road to connect in a secure fashion to a remote organization server using the routing infrastructure provided by a public internetwork (such as the Internet). From the user’s perspective, the VPN connection is a point-to-point connection between the user’s computer and an organization server. This paper declares that the particular policy settings available under Security Options are determined by the security template file, that was imported into the Group Policy object (GPO).

These security templates are .inf files stored in your computer's %windir%\security\templates folder, and by default Windows Server 2003 includes a number of standard templates. The securedc.inf template can be used to harden the security settings on your Windows Server 2003 domain controller, while hisecdc.inf can be used to harden these settings to an even greater degree. Windows Server 2003 offers two MMC snap-ins dedicated to security templates: The Security Templates snap-in and the Security Configuration and Analysis snap-in.

The Security Templates snap-in is used for creating security templates; and the Security Configuration and Analysis snap-in is used to see what's in a template. Windows Server 2003 doesn't come with a preconfigured console for the snap-ins, so you must open the MMC and add them yourself. Each template configures settings in seven areas: Account Policies, Local Policies, Event Log, Restricted Groups, System Services, Registry and File System.