Group Policy Management Best Practices

What are Group Policy Objects?

In a Windows environment, Group Policy Objects (GPOs) serve as containers that store and manage system settings for user or computer accounts. With unparalleled flexibility, GPOs can be linked to various areas of the Active Directory, targeting specific domains, organizational units, or even individual devices. This enables administrators to tailor configurations to specific groups or devices.

How Do I Create a New Group Policy Object?

To create a new GPO, follow these steps:

• First, navigate to the Group Policy Management Console and select the “New” option from the Action menu.
• This will prompt you to name the new object.
• Once created, you can link the GPO to a specific location in your Active Directory by right-clicking on the desired location and selecting “Link an Existing GPO”.
• Finally, you can configure the GPO by defining the settings you want to apply to the linked segment of your AD.

Best Practices for Managing Group Policy

When implementing Group Policy, it’s essential to create smaller GPOs that focus on specific use cases, rather than attempting to manage multiple settings through a single GPO. This not only improves the efficiency of your policy management but also reduces the complexity of your Group Policy infrastructure. By applying GPOs at the OU level rather than the domain level, you can further tailor policies to specific groups of users and computers. Below are some of the most notable best practices for managing Group Policy:

1. Establishing A Structured Approach

To effectively manage your organization’s Group Policy settings, it’s essential to establish a structured approach. One key step is to create separate organizational units (OUs) for users and computers, allowing for more targeted control and management. This can be further refined by using nested OUs to establish granular control over specific groups of users and computers.

2. Maintaining Clarity and Ease of Management

To maintain clarity and ease of management, it’s also important to establish a clear naming policy for your OUs and GPOs. This can be achieved by adding comments to your GPOs, providing detailed descriptions of the policies being implemented. Additionally, understanding the precedence of GPOs and how they interact with one another is crucial for ensuring that policies are applied correctly.

3. Avoiding Common Issues

To avoid potential issues and ensure that your policies are applied correctly, it’s important to avoid blocking policy inheritance and enforcement. Similarly, avoid using the ‘deny’ permission in Group Policy, as this can create unintended consequences and policy conflicts. Implementing change management and change auditing for Group Policy can also help you track and manage changes to your policy settings.

4. Optimizing Group Policy infrastructure

Disabling unused computer and user configurations can help speed up GPO processing, while avoiding the use of a large number of WMI filters can improve the overall performance of your policy settings. Loopback processing can also be used to apply specific policy settings to users, even when they are logged in as a different user.

5. Advanced Group Policy management

To take your Group Policy management to the next level, consider using Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) and regularly backing up your GPOs to ensure that your settings are protected in the event of a disaster or system failure.

6. Back up your GPOs

Accidental changes, intentional misconfigurations, or system failures can all lead to GPOs being deleted or corrupted, resulting in security breaches or productivity losses. By backing up GPOs, you can ensure that critical configurations can be restored in the event of an incident. This backup process allows you to store GPOs in a designated folder, which can be accessed and manipulated using the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC). With GPMC, you can view and manage backed-up GPOs, selecting the most recent version or choosing specific instances to work with.

7. Do Not Modify Default Domain Policy

Refrain from modifying the Default Domain Policy, as it affects all users and computers in the domain. Instead, use the Default Domain Controller Policy for settings related to User Rights Assignment and Audit Policy. Going a step further, it’s recommended to create separate GPOs for these policies, in order to achieve a more granular and customized approach to policy management.

8. Create Smaller GPOs For Specific Use Cases

It’s recommended to create multiple GPOs, each focusing on a specific topic or category, rather than putting all settings into a single object. This approach allows for clear and distinct naming of each GPO, making it easier to track which settings are managed by each one. Moreover, it enables improved management of policy changes, as well as increased confidence in the correct application of rules. By grouping similar settings together, such as network policy, browser policy, and software policy, you can create a logical and organized structure that is easy to understand and maintain.

9. Use Descriptive GPO Names

Clear and descriptive naming conventions for GPOs can significantly improve administrative productivity by enabling quick identification and troubleshooting. As your organization grows, it helps to have a consistent naming standard for GPOs to ensure effective policy management that can scale with the environment.

10. Avoid Using a Lot Of WMI Filters

WMI filters are a powerful tool in Group Policy that allow administrators to apply settings to devices with specific hardware and software. While these filters can be incredibly useful, they also come with some potential drawbacks. Each additional WMI filter can increase the complexity of the group policy processing, slowing down the Windows login process and potentially causing performance issues. As such, it’s generally recommended to use WMI filters sparingly, striking a balance between the benefits they provide and the potential performance costs they may incur.

11. Add Comments to Your GPOs

Comments can be added to GPOs to provide context and explanations for complex settings, making it easier to understand and maintain the GPO structure. To add comments, right-click on the GPO and select Edit, then navigate to the Comment Tab, or access the Properties window by right-clicking on the GPO name. You can also comment on individual settings within Administrative Templates, filtering to show only commented settings to identify areas that need further explanation. Additionally, you can comment on Group Policy Preferences by filling in the Description field.

12. Apply Group Policy to Root OUs

When applying Group Policy to the root of an OU, you’re essentially applying it to the entire tree structure, as all branches will inherit the policy unless explicitly blocked. To link a GPO to an OU, you can follow these steps:

• Log in to the domain controller as an administrator
• Launch the Group Policy Management console by navigating to Start > Administrative Tools
• Navigate to the desired OU
• Right-click on the OU and select “Link an existing GPO” to apply the policy to the entire tree structure

13. Don’t Disable GPOs, Remove Links Instead

Disabling a GPO will prevent it from being applied to other OUs in the domain, potentially causing unintended consequences. Instead of disabling the GPO, remove the link between the GPO and the unwanted OU. This approach allows you to maintain the GPO while preventing it from applying to the incorrect OU, rather than permanently removing the GPO.

14. Speed GPO Processing by Disabling Unused Computer and User Configurations

An effective way to streamline your GPOs is to disable unused configurations, specifically computer and user configurations, as this can significantly accelerate processing speed. However, it’s recommended to create a copy of the policy and test it in a safe environment, such as a test OU, before making any changes. Specifically, duplicate the policy, apply it to a test group, and disable any redundant user or computer sections as needed. By doing so, you’ll be able to evaluate the impact on performance without affecting the integrity of your original policies.

Specific Group Policy Settings

Below are some notable examples of specific Group Policy settings:

1. Control Panel Security: Restrict access to the Control Panel to prevent unauthorized changes to system settings and ensure that only authorized users can make changes.
2. Media Restrictions: Prevent the use of removable media, such as USB drives, to prevent unauthorized data transfer and prevent malware from spreading through infected media.
3. Driver Updates: Prevent automatic driver updates to prevent unauthorized changes to system drivers and ensure that only authorized personnel can update drivers.
4. Command Prompt Security: Restrict access to the command prompt to prevent unauthorized use of system commands and prevent attackers from gaining access to system files.
5. Reboot Control: Prevent forced restarts to prevent system crashes and ensure that users can save their work and log off safely.
6. Software Installations: Prevent users from installing software to prevent unauthorized installations and ensure that only authorized personnel can install software.
7. Authentication: Disable NTLM authentication to prevent brute-force attacks and improve security by using more secure authentication methods.
8. PowerShell Security: Block PowerShell on local computers to prevent unauthorized use of PowerShell commands and prevent attackers from gaining access to system files.
9. Domain Guest Accounts: Disable guest accounts on domain computers to prevent unauthorized access and ensure that only authorized users can log in.
10. Local Administrators: Limit membership in the Local Administrators group to ensure that only authorized personnel can perform administrative tasks.
11. Administrator Account: Rename the local Administrator account to prevent unauthorized access and ensure that only authorized personnel can access the account.
12. Network Security: Restrict anonymous access to named pipes and network shares to prevent unauthorized access and ensure that only authorized users can access network resources.
13. Password Security: Enforce current password best practices to ensure that passwords are strong and meet security standards.
14. SID Enumeration: Disable anonymous SID enumeration to prevent attackers from gathering information about system security and improve overall security.
15. Windows Defender: Prevent users from switching off Windows Defender to ensure that system security is maintained and improved through continuous updates.