Whatever your environment, you are strongly advised to take security matters seriously. If an attack on the servers in your environment is severe enough, it could significantly damage the entire organization. Although the default installation of Windows Vista is quite secure, it is important to remember the trade-offs that exist between security, usability, and functionality of the client computers in your environment. A thorough understanding of these trade-offs places your organization in a position to maximize the security of the Windows Vista environment. Conducting a security vulnerability, risk, and exposure analysis informs you of the tradeoffs between security and functionality that all computer systems are subject to in a networked environment.

Windows Vista Security Guide, created by Microsoft mainly for organizations, provides guidance and tools to further protect Windows Vista against real-live threats such as malware and information theft. This guide documents the major security-related countermeasures that are available in Windows Vista, the vulnerabilities that the countermeasures help address, and the potential negative consequences (if there are any) related to implementing each countermeasure.

This guide builds on the Windows XP Security Guide, which provides specific recommendations about how to harden computers running Windows XP with SP2. The Windows Vista Security Guide provides recommendations to harden computers that use specific security baselines for the following two environments:

• Enterprise Client (EC). Client computers in this environment are located in a domain that uses Active Directory and only need to communicate with systems running Windows Server 2003. The client computers in this environment include a mixture: some run Windows Vista whereas others run Windows XP. For instructions about how to test and deploy the EC environment, see Chapter 1, "Implementing the Security Baseline." And for information about the baseline security settings that this environment uses, see Appendix A, "Security Group Policy Settings."

• Specialized Security – Limited Functionality (SSLF). Concern for security in this environment is so great that a significant loss of functionality and manageability is acceptable. For example, military and intelligence agency computers operate in this type of environment. The client computers in this environment run only Windows Vista. For instructions about how to test and deploy the SSLF environment, see Chapter 5, "Specialized Security – Limited Functionality." And for information about the SSLF settings that this environment uses, see Appendix A, "Security Group Policy Settings."

The security recommendations in the Windows Vista Security Guide have been validated through extensive testing. And the GPO Accelerator tool that accompanies the guidance helps you automatically deploy the security settings in minutes instead of hours.

Reference Links: Http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb629420.aspx: Windows vista security guide