Building a Secure Windows 2000 Professional Network Installation

The Windows(R) 2000 Operating System (OS) was designed to be a stable and secure platform capable of running current business applications. The foundations for the Windows(R) 2000 architecture stem from the Windows NT Operating System. While much of the processes for securing Windows NT still apply, Windows(R) 2000 has been enhanced with new features and tools to improve its security. This paper will examine these new features and explain the intent of the features as well as recommend settings that should be applied. While there are some features of Windows(R) 2000 such as Group Policy and Intellimirror that only apply to a Windows(R) 2000 domain, the scope of this paper is the Windows(R) 2000 Professional OS. Some of the recommended settings can and often should be implemented using Group Policy. This paper will not cover Active Directory, Group Policy or Intellimirror in any depth except to mention these technologies when appropriate.